Agnieszka Holland, Director of ‘Europa, Europa,’ Set to Receive the Göteborg Festival’s Honorary Award

In a year when the Göteborg Film Festival will highlight the importance of truth, it will give its international Honorary Dragon Award to a director who has been doing that all her long, storied and multi-prized career: Poland’s Agnieszka Holland. 

One of European cinema’s greats, Holland will present “Franz,” her non-bio, non-hagiographic but playful takes on the Czech writer, his life, inspirations and impact down to this day, where he is now part of Prague’s tourist industry. 

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Prague made her, Holland maintains. Arriving in the mid-’60s from her native Poland, it gave her a film education at its famed FAMU film school, an inspiration in the Czech New Wave and a grounding in activism – she supported the 1968 Prague Spring – repression and life. This she channelled to the good in her work, a creative process observed in the final part of “Screen Tests,” (1979) one of her earliest films when she returned to Poland, which will play at a Göteborg retrospective. 

Holland was respected from almost the get-go. Made back in Poland, “Screen Tests” opened the very first Göteborg Film Festival in 1979. Her “Provincial Actors,” also part of  the Göteborg showcase, won a 1980 Cannes’ Fipresci Award. 

The retrospective will also take in Holland’s most famous film, the Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe winning “Europa, Europa” (1993) where she tells the true-facts based story of Jew Solomon Perel, who survives WWII by admission to a Soviet orphanage and then Germany’s Nazi Youth. 

Asking unpalatable questions about here the frailty of European identity or about Belarus and Polish immigration policy in “Green Border,” another Göteborg title,  has turned Holland into an ethical example for many, while abominated by others. Göteborg audiences, after seeing “Green Border,” can reflect on what is happening in a Europe where Poland’s Minister of Justice, after “Green Border,” came to compare her to Goebbels and Stalin. 

“But I am not a politician,” she has told Variety’s Chief Film Critic Peter Debruge. “I think that my duty — or maybe ‘duty’ is too heavy a word, by like my aim — is to speak about the things that people don’t want to hear, maybe, and the politicians made them hostile against the voices which are rising in defense of some values which had been widely accepted 10 years ago and now are not anymore.”    

“Agnieszka Holland is one of the most distinctive voices in European cinema and one of the most vital filmmakers of our time. With films such as ‘Europa Europa’ and ‘In Darkness,’ she has explored historical and contemporary crises through an uncompromising humanist lens. Moving effortlessly between intimate character studies and politically charged narratives, her work is marked by precision, empathy, and fearless artistic integrity,’ the Göteborg Festival observed Wednesday.

“Throughout her career, Holland has combined artistic power with an unwavering political commitment. Several of her films have been banned, she herself has been arrested, and most recently Green Border sparked political outrage in her home country. These reactions are a direct result of her persistent determination to confront Europe’s darker realities, past and present,” it added.

Holland’s career is, however, far broader than the works she directed in her native country. Back in Poland, Andrzej Wajda, who took her under his wing, paid her the ultimate compliment of asking her to serve as first assistant director on “Man of Marble” and help rework the screenplay of Cannes Palme d’Or winner “Man of Iron,” to make reference to events unfolding at that very same time at Gdansk shipyard. 

Krzysztof Kieślowski asked her to collaborate on the screenplays of his “Three Colors” trilogy, David Simon employed her to direct episodes of “The Wire.” and “Treme.” She directed “The Secret Garden,” a home run and also at Göteborg, for Francis Ford Coppola. 

“Agnieszka Holland has repeatedly demonstrated how cinema can be both artistically groundbreaking and deeply rooted in the moral questions of our time,” said Göteborg Artistic Director Pia Lundberg. “To welcome a filmmaker who for decades has explored the many layers of truth – the uncomfortable, the contradictory, and the profoundly human – is particularly meaningful this year, when the festival’s focus is precisely on truth.”

Holland will receive the Honorary Dragon Award at Stora Teatern on Jan. 30. Her acceptance and an onstage interview with her will no doubt mark highlights of 2026’s Göteborg Festival.

The 2026 Göteborg Film Festival runs Jan. 23–Feb. 1. The full program will be announced on Jan. 7.