Photo: Miramax / The Kobal Collection

Born in Warsaw, Poland; educated at the Lódz State Theatrical and Film College. Leading Polish director whose films are most influenced by those of his countrymen Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda. Kieslowski began making documentaries which focused on the cultural, political and economic problems which sparked the emergence of the Solidarity movement. His award-winning 1979 feature, CAMERA BUFF, a slyly humorous, satirical look at life in a corrupt provincial factory, may have had personal dimensions for Kieslowski as it depicts a filmmaker who exposes himself to both attention and criticism when he progresses from home movies to committed social documentaries. (It featured a cameo by Zanussi playing himself.) Kieslowski learned firsthand that censorship may ride on the coattails of exposure with BLIND CHANCE (1981), which considered three possibilities for Poland's political future as it explored three different outcomes springing from the premise of a student trying to catch a train. BLIND CHANCE was unable to include a fourth story in which Poland throws out the Communist Party entirely, and the remaining film, still quite impressive, was banned for over five years before finally being released in 1987. While the outcome of one BLIND CHANCE story was a blithely apolitical world (the student misses the train, and instead meets a sexy woman with whom he becomes involved), Kieslowski's subsequent NO END (1984), while not forsaking wit entirely, nonetheless refused to be glibly satirical. The film's hero, a lawyer who represented many Poles oppressed by martial law, is dead at the film's opening. Like Zanussi's work, Kieslowski's films always featured philosophical journeys into the human spirit and a concern for the moral and ethical implications of human action. Fittingly, he confirmed his status as a major contemporary director with DECALOGUE (1988), an ambitious series of ten hour-long films funded by Polish TV, telling stories "based" on the Ten Commandments. (In DECALOGUE 10, for instance, two brothers, an accountant and a punk rocker, both covet the stamp collection they have inherited from their father.) In the same year, Kieslowski expanded segments five and six into two features, A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING and A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE. Partially set, like the rest of the series, on a Warsaw housing estate, A SHORT FILM ABOUT KILLING is a grim and powerful tale drawing formal parallels between the act of murder and the workings of the criminal justice system. Kieslowski ventured even closer to the realm of the human heart and soul and shifted further away from the political realities of contemporary Poland with his first international co-production, THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE (1991). A more conventional art house item, the film, not surprisingly, gave his career greater international exposure than ever before as it strikingly and intensely paralleled the lives of two remarkably similar women who appear to be doppelgangers. With his acclaimed trilogy, BLUE (1993), WHITE (1994) and RED (1994), based on the tricolor themes of liberty, equality and fraternity represented in the French flag, Kieslowski, proffering a densely plotted network of chance meetings and mutually destructive relationships, once again used the alienated female psyche as a vehicle for his recurrent social and metaphysical ruminations. Later in 1994 he announced his intention to retire from filmmaking. He died in 1996.  Nominated for Achievement in Directing 1994: RED  Nominated for Achievement in Writing (Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen) 1994: RED (w. Krzysztof Piesiewicz) 2 nominations