
Actor, Director Jerzy Stuhr Opens Polish Film Festival
Five of the Famed Thespian’s Films to Be Screened Nov. 15 to 19
The Rochester N.Y. Polish Film Festival is hitting the big time. This year, the five-day festival will not only showcase some of Poland’s best cinematic treasures as it has for the past dozen years, it also will bring to town one of Poland’s most acclaimed actors, screenplay writers, and directors to headline the event. Jerzy Stuhr will introduce and discuss five films in which he played a leading role or that he directed.
“Jerzy Stuhr is Poland’s Dustin Hoffman and Stephen Spielberg rolled into one,” said Randall Stone, director of the University of Rochester’s Skalny Center for Polish and Central European Studies, which is sponsoring the film festival. “Like Dustin Hoffman, Stuhr is an outstanding character actor, able to bring to life all kinds of roles, from comic to tragic; like Stephen Spielberg, his films are intensely entertaining but deeply serious.”
Stuhr, who has won a host of Polish and international film awards, including the 2005 Life Achievement Award at the International Film Festival in Venice, is best known internationally for his role as the thick-witted hairdresser Jurek in Kieślowski’s Three Colors: White. In Poland, fans love his character Max from the 1985 cult comedy Seksmisja, while youngsters know him through the voice of Donkey in the Polish version of Shrek.