Agnieszka Holland

Frequent screenwriter for Andrzej Wajda whose own films as a director have focused on the lives of the marginal and the doomed. Holland studied filmmaking in Czechoslovakia under Milos Forman and Ivan Passer, returning to Poland in 1972 after police harassment had culminated in a jail sentence. She made her co-directing debut in 1977 with "Screen Tests" and wrote her first screenplay for Wajda, "Without Anaesthesia," in 1978. Two years later her solo feature directing debut, "Provincial Actors," won the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes. After the imposition of martial law in 1981 Holland emigrated to Paris, where she still lives.