We expected that people were just waiting for the collapse of the Soviet Union, or at least for its retreat, and they were going to be full of initiative in all areas of life – in culture, in economy and in politics.

There is no filmmaking legislation because distributors are not interested in sharing their money with the film industry – for instance, by giving a percentage of ticket sales back to filmmakers.

Why does there exist a global American entertainment industry, but there isn’t an equivalent coming from France or Italy? This is the case simply because the English language opens the whole world to the American cinema.

A great artist has died, a man with the hallmarks of a genius.

In the first years after 1989, films were partly financed from the state's budget as well as by public television. Still, except for a few special cases, most films are made this way.

Young directors had no choice but to throw themselves into writing scripts. That did not have a positive effect on the quality of Polish cinema.

We knew from the very beginning that this was a Soviet crime. There were letters (from the detention camp) that people received, including from my own father. All of a sudden the letters stopped coming. We were aware that something happened in the spring of 1940. There was no doubt.

With it adult political audiences abandoned cinemas. In their place appeared a void. That previous political audience migrated to the seats in front of their TV.

Previously the same Polish audiences would have been pressured into seeing cinema made for adults, films made by us about those spheres of life that were significant for us and which should be significant for our society.

By dint of that concern and because that society was willing to examine its particular reality, Solidarity could come into existence.