Monika Majorek

Monika Majorek consistently examines family relationships with attentiveness, directing the camera towards both small cracks and large fractures. From her first school study, Monika Majorek reveals her talent for detecting the most important and breakthrough events in seemingly fleeting and ordinary moments of her characters’ lives.

July 2014, Ukraine, Donetsk Oblast. A father and his 11-year-old son travel empty roads filled with armed separatist militias. They are going to meet his father, who sent a message about his critical health condition. Upon arrival, it turns out that the elderly man is quite well and deliberately misled his long-unseen son.

In the study “First,” Monika Majorek does not focus on unresolved issues between adult men. Her story centers on the 11-year-old boy who is not spoken to about the purpose of his participation in the journey. While the men are occupied with each other, the boy befriends a neighborhood girl. Though they cannot communicate, a bond forms between them. The situation between the children changes when a Malaysia Airlines passenger plane is downed by a separatist missile right above their heads.

The short film, made in 2015, was produced at the Warsaw Film School, where Monika Majorek studied directing. That same year, with another student film, “Inka,” the director was accepted into the Cannes Short Film Corner, Palm Springs Short Fest, and Wrocław’s New Horizons.

“Inka” is the story of a young rural girl who conflicts with the local priest. We can only guess what happened between them by the panic-stricken fear that seizes the protagonist when she learns the priest is alone with her younger sister. The local community views the potential victim as a traitor, and the girl’s father advises leaving the matter alone, saying that in time everything will blow over and Inka will forget. Majorek avoids leading the plot to an obvious conclusion, leaving viewers with questions about the price Inka paid for her pursuit of justice.

In 2020, Monika Majorek made her diploma film “After Season” She returned to the theme of growing up and awakening feelings, this time focusing on the erotic aspect of the transformation occurring in a young person. Here is teenage Adam, a resident of a resort run by his parents. His mother and father still treat him like a child, addressing him as “Adasiu” and entering the bathroom without knocking, unaware of the impression the mysterious woman who appears at the resort after the season has made on their son. Adam’s obsessive spying on the stranger also leads him to the sad truth about his parents’ marriage.

Even though “After season” is a short film (less than 20 minutes), Monika Majorek successfully immerses viewers in the complexities and nuances of her four protagonists’ world. The emotional loneliness of a mother deprived (likely due to illness) of a breast, the quest for fleeting happiness by the mysterious newcomer, and the uncertainty and fever of Adam’s adolescence – the director perfectly balances and subtly suggests information that viewers intuitively use to construct the emotional landscape of the characters’ situation. The film was screened in the short film competition at the Film Debut Festival in Koszalin and competed for the Golden Grape at the Lubusz Film Summer short film competition.

Monika Majorek’s short films have been screened at many festivals, earning her the Panavision Film Award, among others. In addition to the Warsaw Film School, the director also completed journalism, courses at StoryLab.pro, Sundance Collab, and the Raindance Film Academy. She also worked on film productions and TV series as the first and second assistant director. In 2022, she received certification as a script consultant and has since been collaborating with screenwriters, helping them develop their projects.

In 2024, Monika Majorek debuted with a feature film “There Will Be No Other End” for which she received the Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the 40th Warsaw Film Festival and two awards at the 49th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia for “Most Daring Look” and “Fresh Perspective.” The film was also recognized with: the directing award in Koszalin, the Ryszard Bugajski award at Tofifest, a debutant distinction in Tarnów, and recognition at the Opolskie Lamy Festival.

“The film stemmed from my long-standing reflections on whether what doesn’t kill us truly makes us stronger,” the director declared in an interview on the program “Herra on Air.” After a long absence, Ola (Maja Pankiewicz), the eldest of three siblings, impulsively decides to return to her family home. Some time ago, she left her mother (Agata Kulesza) and younger siblings: Pipek (Sebastian Dela) and Ajka (Klementyna Karnkowska) to “pursue a career in the capital.” Ola is a photographer, a passion instilled by her father (Bartłomiej Topa). His amateur videos and photos are the only material remnants of him, as he took his own life three years earlier. When Ola arrives in her family surroundings, it turns out that these mementos may also soon be gone, as a major cleaning of the family home is underway, with her mother having decided to sell it.

“The screening of There Will Be No Other End gives a sense of participating in something extremely intimate and personal; it’s like browsing through someone else’s keepsakes or experiencing the memories of a loved one. With a lump in our throats, we follow the turbulent fate of a family in which we can easily see ourselves and our existential dilemmas,” wrote Daria Sienkiewicz for Filmweb. Majorek begins an in-depth dissection of a family shattered by tragic death. Ola rebels against discarding memories; Ajka and Pipek pretend they have long come to terms with the painful past, while Mama, strongly motivated to start a new chapter in life, gets rid of everything associated with her deceased husband without regret. Digging up old photographs and playing recordings from dusty tapes sparks an idea for Ola. In an attempt to momentarily halt time slipping through her fingers, she grabs a camera, desperately trying to recreate what is long gone. (…) No Polish film has portrayed a Polish family so convincingly and accurately in a long time.”

However, Ola’s actions are not a remedy for unfinished grief. Her attempts to piece the family together from moments captured in photos and videos, at times forcibly imposed without regard for the feelings of others, tend to reopen wounds rather than heal them.

“I think Ola is a character that’s not easy to like. She goes to her family seeking certain answers,” the director explained. “She breaks taboos in a rather brutal way, though you can sense a lot of sensitivity and empathy in her. I think in grief we lack a filter. Everything burns and hurts, making it difficult to take small steps. You’re either honest, or you shut down. Maja balanced between the two. Sometimes she’s angry with herself, sometimes with others, the father, the world. Sometimes the pain is unbearable. She is also a character who doesn’t easily cry. She won’t say she’s not okay. She would definitely like to handle things better than she does,” the director said in an interview for filmawka.pl conducted by Jakub Nowociński.

“The confessional nature of There Will Be No Other End encourages reflection on clinging to the past and investing emotions in material objects, bearing the illusory promise of immortality. Not without reason, in the objects belonging to her deceased parent, Ola senses her father’s presence. Majorek exquisitely stages this state suspended between reality and dream in the film with a touch of magical realism. It doesn’t matter whether it’s imagination playing tricks on the protagonist or if the creator genuinely suggests that somewhere beyond our vision lies a mythical ‘other side’,” reads on Filmweb.

“The winner of the Audience Award at the Warsaw Film Festival skillfully reveals to viewers the most absurd dimension of human longing, the kind that dulls senses, confuses facts with chimeras, and leads to self-destruction. Although Majorek’s work is a difficult journey through family traumas and fears, it ultimately guarantees a cathartic relief. It’s cinema that leaves in shreds, yet with great directorial sensitivity and a truly therapeutic potential.”

Currently, Monika Majorek is working on another original feature film and is also developing cinema targeting a younger audience.