玛高扎塔·施莫夫兹卡

Małgorzata Szumowska is the daughter of journalist and writer Dorota Terakowska and journalist and filmmaker Maciej Szumowski, sister of documentary director Wojciech Szumowski. She graduated from the National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź in 1998. Prior to her film studies, she read art history at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. She became a member of the European Film Academy in 2001.


Małgorzata Szumowska has received numerous awards at international and Polish film festivals. Her film etude Cisza/ Silence made it onto the list of the 14 best films in the history of the Łódź film school, while Robert Redford's Sundance Institute recognized the script for the feature film Ono/ Stranger as one of the three best texts from Europe.

Małgorzata Szumowska is among the most famous female directors of the young generation. With three full-length features to her credit - her debut Szczęśliwy człowiek / Happy Man (2000), followed by Stranger (2004), and 33 sceny z życia / 33 Scenes From Life (2008) she has also made several documentaries and short films. Many of them received a lot of publicity, though the critics were most often divided in their views.