Wiktor Grodecki

WRITER / DIRECTOR / PRODUCER

Wiktor Grodecki is an award-winning writer/director currently based in Prague. He studied at the Directing Department of the Polish Academy for Film, Drama, and TV in Lodz from 1979 until 1983 (the class of Wojciech Jerzy Has). In 1983, his feature documentary about Roman Polanski “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man” had been invited to FILMEX in Los Angeles by Gary Essert. Grodecki had been granted a passport to travel by the Polish communist authorities but they refused to let him take his Film. He decided to smuggle it out and, once in the U.S., he resolved not to return to Poland and received political asylum. Grodecki stayed in the U.S, where he continued to work as a Film & TV director and Editor. Among other works, he directed a feature film “Him” loosely based on Oscar Wilde’s “Salome” produced by Albert Milgrom and staged two plays by St.I.Witkiewicz – “They” and “Madman and the Nun” in Minneapolis, MN.

In 1992, Wiktor Grodecki returned to Europe as a Supervising Director on “Night Train To Venice” starring Hugh Grant and Malcolm McDowell, and between 1994 and 1997 he worked on his “Europe in transition” trilogy – “Not Angels But Angels” (1994), “Body Without Soul” (1996) and “Mandragora” (1998) – Audience Choice Award at Palm Springs Nortel Int’l Film Festival 1998 (all films released in the U.S. and Europe). “Mandragora” was the first feature film depicting the fate of runaway kids in the Czech Republic – Grodecki had received a letter of recognition from President Vaclav Havel as well as several prizes at international film festivals.