Before Ewa Puszczyńska made “Ida” with Piotr Dzięcioł and Eric Abraham, she worked on films in many various capacities: line producer, production assistant, executive producer, delegate producer, co-producer, production coordinator...

She has also simply been a producer numerous times. Perhaps only she, the heroine of “Cinema lesson,” can tell us about the nuances that distinguish each role. She will also tell us about how more than 20 years of experience lead Opus Film (the company she works for) to an Oscar for best foreign-language film.

As she reminisces herself, she ended up in filmmaking by chance. With a background in English studies, she translated films' dialogue lists. One day her friends recommended her to Piotr Dzięcioł (founder and head of Opus Film) as an interpreter for a meeting with clients. Years later Puszczyńska looks back: “The conversation was mostly in English, very precise. I managed to translate everything. Later I was an on-set interpreter for a commercial of “Nałęczowianka” mineral water. It was the first time I had to deal with cinema language, chiefly technical language, which I didn't know at the time.”

Opus Film soon began producing feature-length projects by important Polish authors, and Ewa Puszczyńska quickly gained skill in the world of cinema. She debuted as line producer for the Polish-Luxembourg film “Your Name Is Justine.” While working on subsequent films, the scope of her control over the production process expanded. And with it grew responsibility. The films she has worked on include “The Congress” by Ari Folman, “Inland Empire” by David Lynch, “Zero” by Paweł Borowski, and “Mr. Kuka's Advice” by Dariusz Gajewski. She has also worked on many international co-productions (including “Spring 1941” by Uri Babash, “The Here After” by Magnus von Horn, and “Aglaya” by Krisztina Deák).

The success of “Ida” – several dozen prestigious awards worldwide, great popularity in the USA and France, among other countries – has exceeded all expectations. Puszczyńska stresses, however, that she and Piotr Dzięcioł were familiar with Pawlikowski's films and knew that they would be in for an extraordinary creative ride – the dream of any producer who loves cinema.

Sebastian Smoliński