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The Films of Agnieszka Holland
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Book Presentation:
Examines Polish director Agnieszka Holland’s films and television works from the perspective of transnational screen cultures
• First anglophone monograph about Agnieszka Holland’s versatile work
• Analyses transnational women’s cinema
• Reassess women’s cinema in a state-socialist context
• Combines textual analysis, production cultures, and reception studies
• Explores multitude of authorship discourses
The Films of Agnieszka Holland is the first monograph devoted to the internationally most famous Polish filmmaker, a three times Oscar nominee and the recipient of numerous film festival prizes.
It examines her rich, original oeuvre, which ranges from Holocaust dramas such as Europa, Europa (1990) to episodes of the HBO series, The Wire.
In examining the multifaceted nature of Holland’s authorship, the study situates her work in the context of art, popular, national, European, Hollywood, transnational, women’s, and queer cinema, as well as global television projects. Her colourful public persona oscillates among auteur, celebrity director, and political activist in an extraordinary professional trajectory, which started in the Eastern Bloc, continued in Western Europe and North America, then backtracked to a unified Europe. That zigzagged route conveys the unique nature of Holland’s career while epitomising the transformations of post-Cold War cultural production.
Press Reviews:
"With more than 40 feature films to her name – and counting – film director Agnieszka Holland may be the most prolific female filmmaker in history today. Elżbieta Ostrowska weaves together the multiple strands of this illustrious career in an absorbing narrative that reveals a persistency of vision in the name of an unobstructed creativity. From the studio system of communist Poland to Hollywood's production machine to a variety of European discursive agendas, Holland's creative and public persona emerges all over again -- unscathed, and with renewed vigor and ingenuity against the odds of adverse industrial, critical and nationalist discourses. A fascinating case study of a nomadic pioneer of transnational filmmaking."
– Dina Iordanova, Emeritus Professor in Global Cinema, University of St Andrews, Scotland
"Combining meticulous research, critical acumen, and theoretical sophistication, Ostrowska judiciously tracks the ways in which the concerns of ethics, politics, identity, gender and spirituality have criss-crossed Holland’s provocative oeuvre. Particularly impressive is her tenacious grasp of its Protean shifts between auteurism, national and transnational cinema, Hollywood, and ‘women’s cinema’"
– Paul Coates, Emeritus Professor of Film Studies, Western University, Canada
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
See the complete filmography of Agnieszka Holland on the website: IMDB ...
> From the same author:
The Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia (2016)
Between Pain and Pleasure
Dir. Ewa Mazierska, Matilda Mroz and Elżbieta Ostrowska
The Cinema of Roman Polanski (2006)
Dark Spaces of the World
Dir. John Orr and Elżbieta Ostrowska
Subject: Director > Roman Polanski
The Cinema of Andrzej Wajda (2004)
Dir. John Orr and Elżbieta Ostrowska
Subject: Director > Andrzej Wajda
> On a related topic:
Boro, L'Île d'Amour (2020)
The Films of Walerian Borowczyk
Dir. Kamila Kuc, Kuba Mikurda and Michał Oleszczyk
Subject: Director > Walerian Borowczyk
Double Lives, Second Chances (2013)
The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski
Subject: Director > Krzysztof Kieslowski
The Political Films of Andrzej Wajda (1996)
Dialogism in Man of Marble, Man of Iron, and Danton
Subject: Director > Andrzej Wajda
The Oneiric in the Films of David Lynch (2026)
A Phenomenological Approach
Subject: Director > David Lynch
The Films of Walter Hill (2025)
Another Time, Another Place
by Brian Brems
Subject: Director > Walter Hill
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