Born in Poland, he has been living in Paris since 1970. In 1978 he made his first short film, Rzecz. He set up the Filmogene Studio in 1987. He made his feature debut Lucy’s Revenge’ in Burkina Faso in 1998; the film won him an M-Net All Africa Film Award (the African equivalent of an Oscar) in Pretoria. Bad Boys, Cell 425, the only Polish-language film screened at Cannes 2009, was his documentary debut.