For serious subject matter, Maślona seeks a counterbalance—a form that does not drag audiences down or overwhelm them. He distances himself from the tradition of Poland’s “cinema of moral anxiety,” avoids immersing his stories in bleak shades of grey, and steers clear of an approach that treats everything with unrelenting seriousness.

Watching Maślona’s short films, one gets the impression that from the very beginning he knew exactly how he wanted to tell stories—and, just as importantly, how he definitely did not want to tell them. For serious subject matter, he seeks a counterbalance: a form that does not drag audiences down or overwhelm them. He distances himself from the tradition of Poland’s “cinema of moral anxiety,” avoids immersing his work in bleak shades of grey, and steers clear of an approach rooted entirely in solemnity.

At one audience discussion following a screening of his feature debut Panic Attack, the director admitted that humour is one of the things that keeps him going.

“It is one of the few weapons we are given in our struggle with the things we face every day: loneliness, fear, or panic attacks,” he said.

In 2013, Magma won the Young Cinema Competition at the Gdynia Film Festival and received the award for Best Student Narrative Film at the Palm Springs International ShortFest. Shortly thereafter, Jan Kwieciński of Akson Studio approached Maślona with a proposal to produce his feature-film debut.

Before fully committing himself to feature filmmaking, however, Maślona directed thirteen episodes of the television series Jako mąż i nie mąż (As a Husband and Not a Husband), produced by Akson Studio for TVN. He also co-wrote Demon with Marcin Wrona, his former lecturer, whom he had assisted on the set of The Christening while still a student. Together they worked on the screenplays for both Demon and Murder (Mord), a project that Wrona was unable to complete before his tragic death. In numerous interviews, Maślona has spoken about how much he learned from that collaboration.

He also developed the screenplay for his feature debut as part of a creative team, working alongside Bartłomiej Kotschedoff and Aleksandra Pisula, actors who would later deliver outstanding performances in the film as a waiter addicted to computer strategy games and a young woman earning money through an online webcam service.

Work on the screenplay lasted four years. The script was further developed during a programme at the Wajda School and underwent numerous transformations. It began as Trash Stories, a project Maślona created together with Kotschedoff and Pisula for a competition in Venice. The original multi-threaded narrative was united by the theme of Naples’ waste-management crisis. Over time, the parallel storylines were relocated to a Polish setting, while the title panic attack became the thematic thread binding the entire film together—a growing, underlying anxiety foreshadowing an inevitable catastrophe.

As a result of this lengthy collaborative process, neither the screenplay nor the dialogue contains a false note. Much of the credit also belongs to the director’s openness to what actors bring to the creative process. Throughout his films, Maślona demonstrates an exceptional ability to guide and work with performers.

Panic Attack is a multi-strand narrative. A group of teenagers secretly smoke marijuana behind their parents’ backs when one of the boys begins to feel unwell. Their fear of their parents prevents them from taking action. Monika, a writer (Magdalena Popławska, who won an award at the Gdynia Film Festival for this supporting role), meets her former husband for dinner—although they are not yet divorced—to learn about his upcoming wedding and the child he is expecting. She fears loneliness, old age, and the possibility that it may already be too late for everything. A husband and wife (Artur Żmijewski and Dorota Segda) are returning from a holiday flight together with the husband’s boss. They are afraid to oppose him and unable to show even the slightest degree of assertiveness, even in an extreme and life-threatening situation. A waiter addicted to computer games (Bartłomiej Kotschedoff, who received the Best Acting Debut award at the Young and Film Festival in Koszalin for his bold and distinctive screen performance) is terrified of an anonymous voice blackmailing him over the phone. Meanwhile, a pregnant bride (Julia Wyszyńska), while describing her dream childbirth at her wedding reception, is secretly haunted by the fear that something may go wrong. Kamil’s sister (Aleksandra Pisula) fears that her former friends, who arrive unexpectedly and are troubled by the suicide of her ex-boyfriend—a radio host who shoots himself on air in the film’s opening scene—will discover the true nature of her work.

Maślona pushes all of these storylines to the edge of absurdity and places them firmly within quotation marks. With remarkable confidence, he orchestrates the narrative and creates a fully realized black comedy—or, as he himself prefers to call it, a tragicomedy. At the same time, he observes his characters with attentiveness, understanding, and a certain tenderness. There is no judgment, criticism, or ridicule in his gaze. The audience’s laughter emerges from situational context, absurd chains of coincidence, or the recognition of circumstances familiar from their own lives, even if they are happening to someone else.

Following the premiere of Panic Attack, critics focused primarily on the film’s mosaic-like, polyphonic structure, its precise weaving together of multiple storylines, and its dynamic and visually engaging narrative style.

After its premiere at the 2017 Gdynia Film Festival, critics particularly praised the film’s intricate, multi-layered construction, the precision with which its various threads were interconnected, and its energetic and compelling storytelling. These qualities were further enhanced by Agnieszka Glińska’s meticulously crafted editing and the pulsating score by Jimek (Radzimir Dębski), which continuously drives the film’s momentum forward.

Drawing on the conventions of comedy, Maślona succeeded in creating a film that conceals a dark emotional universe beneath the surface of exuberant genre cinema.

For the most promising directorial debut, Maślona received the Janusz “Kuba” Morgenstern Perspective Award, a nomination for the 2018 Polityka Passport in the Film category, and a nomination for the Polish Film Award (Orzeł) in the Discovery of the Year category.

“The film is a display of directorial virtuosity. The debut filmmaker demonstrates complete control over his actors, editing, and complex narrative structure. In Panic Attack we are given an original example of an absurd, intelligent black comedy—a genre virtually absent from contemporary Polish cinema—that accurately diagnoses the traumas and anxieties of the Polish middle class,” wrote Jakub Majmurek in his justification for Maślona’s Polityka Passport nomination.

Following his debut, Maślona directed two television series: the ten-episode crime drama Motyw (Motive) and nine episodes of the second season of Pisarze. Serial na krótko (Writers: A Short Series), broadcast by Canal+. For several years he worked on the screenplay for Lubiewo, an adaptation of Michał Witkowski’s acclaimed novel. Together with Bartłomiej Kotschedoff, he developed the project within the Ekran+ programme at the Wajda School, where it received funding from the Polish Film Institute (PISF).

Meanwhile, at the premiere of another film, Maślona met Michał A. Zieliński, who had just begun work on his debut screenplay, provisionally described as a “Kościuszko Western.” After reading a brief presentation of the project, Maślona immediately became enthusiastic about collaborating on it.

“I had always dreamed of making a period film and of confronting the subject of serfdom through cinema. After seeing Monika Strzępka’s play In the Name of Jakub S. and doing some reading on the subject, I felt that this was exactly the kind of story I wanted to tell,” Maślona recalled.

Kos is set in the era of Tadeusz Kościuszko. The story takes place in 1794, just a few days before the outbreak of the Kościuszko Uprising. Although Kościuszko is the film’s titular character, its true protagonist is Ignac, a serf portrayed by Bartosz Bielenia.

“The film is a fantasy about Tadeusz Kościuszko and about the events of that period,” the director explained in an interview for Polish Radio Programme One. “It is a fantasy in which we strive to remain as close as possible to the historical truth of the era. We will not see the uprising itself, nor the Battle of Racławice. At the centre of the story is Ignac, a peasant bound by serfdom. The film explores the legacy of serfdom and examines violence in its broadest sense—physical, psychological, systemic, and sexual. It combines several genres: black comedy, drama, and a revenge story with elements of a western. However, it will not be a western pastiche,” Maślona revealed.

The film is produced by Leszek Bodzak and Aneta Hickinbotham of Aurum Film, together with Daniel Baur of the German company K5 International, which is also responsible for the film’s international distribution. Kos is additionally notable as the first theatrical co-production undertaken in Poland by the streaming platform Viaplay.

Alongside Bartosz Bielenia, the cast includes Jacek Braciak, Robert Więckiewicz, Agnieszka Grochowska, Łukasz Simlat, Andrzej Seweryn, Piotr Pacek, Matylda Giegżno in her feature-film debut, and American actor Jason Mitchell.

The film was  released in October 2023.