Polish producer builds on double Berlin selection

Agnieszka Kurzydło, the Polish producer who has In The Name Of and Baby Blues in Berlinale selection, is now working on forthcoming projects including Marcin Koszalka’s Red Spider and Grzegorz Jaroszuk’s Kebab & Horoscope.

Both will shoot this year for delivery in 2014. Red Spider is about a true teenage serial killer in communist Poland. “[Koszalka] is one of the best Polish documentary directors and DOPs. I admire his work, he is extremely talented and quite famous in Poland, and I felt that he would be the right person to shoot this story: so I invited him to make a feature film and he agreed.

Jaroszuk, a former EFA nominee for his short Frozen Stories, is working on his feature debut, Kebab & Horoscope (working title). The story is about solitude but the producer notes that it is “a hilarious comedy.  I love Grzesiek’s sense of humor and already the script got very good reviews. This is a very important project to me, since it would be my firstcomedy as producer,” she tells Screen.

Both features are supported by the Polish Film Institute and are mostly financed although Kurzydlo is also looking for partners.

She worked at Zentropa International Poland before setting up her own company Mental Disorder 4 (MD4) in 2011.

She has been collaborating with In The Name Of director Malgosia Szumowska for 16 years, and says they also have a new project in the early stages of development. She also has another early-stage project with Kasia Roslaniec, who directed Baby Blues.