Karbala is Polish director Krzysztof Łukaszewicz most recent film, released only in 2015 and nominated several times at the Polish Academy Awards, finally winning for Best Cinematography. Based on real events, the film recounts the story of Polish NATO soldiers during Operation Iraqi Freedom in April 2004, when, surrounded by Iraqi rebels, they were trying…

Jacek Bromski’s Anatomy of Evil, winner of the Gdynia Polish Film Festival in 2015, is certainly one of Kinoteka’s highlights this year. Allegedly based on a real events, it tells the story of Lulek, a former professional hit-man who, after a long stint in prison, is offered a job by his former prosecutor to redeem…

After a lengthy absence from the big screen, Dariusz Gajewski marks his first foray back into feature-length production with Obce Niebo (Strange Heaven, 2015) –  written, directed, and produced by the Polish cinematographer. Following a seven-year hiatus, Gajewski has successfully returned to the director’s chair to craft a film both modern and relevant, but also with a charming…

This year’s Easter Monday marked the 80th birthday of Zdeněk Svěrák, one of the Czech Republic’s most popular actors and film makers. To celebrate the occasion, 80 cinemas around the world showed his films, including London’s small Deptford cinema, which was all made up for the occasion with balloons and paper chains, announcing, in his…

Thursday 24 March 2016 was International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. To recognise this and mark the start of a new initiative backed by the Romanian Cultural Institute (RCI), Alina Șerban gave a performance of her one-woman show I Declare at My Own Risk – an autobiographical account of Șerban’s personal journey from…

The first 100% Romanian play in London – created by Romanians for the  Romanian community – had its West End premiere at the Leicester Square Theatre. Suggestively called Aliens with Extraordinary Skills, it’s the product of determination and enthusiasm both on and off the stage.The artists involved have succeeded in bringing it to life through sheer self-belief, along…

The Tailor of Inverness, a Dogstar production which premiered at Chats Palace in Hackney last week, tells the story of Mateusz Zajac, a Polish tailor from the former Eastern Polish region of Galicia. First performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2008, the play’s told by Zajac’s son Matthew, the writer and the actor, who…

The provocative title Eastern European for Dummies, an ‘interactive immigration piece’ by There There theatre company, certainly gave a sense of what this show promised. At the start, only fifteen audience members were allowed into the room, equipped with an activity pack about Eastern Europeans (or, to use the abbreviation, EEs). Onstage an interactive exhibition…

The gadulka’s role in a Bulgarian folk orchestra might be compared the viola’s in a Western classical orchestra. Like the viola, it has bowed strings. Like the viola, it supports the other instruments, providing a sort of musical backbone, but doesn’t quite work as a solo instrument. And, like violists, gadulka players find themselves the…

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a group of naïve Bosnian students triggered World War I – so most historians claim at least. Yet The Cause by Jeremy James at Jermyn St. Theatre tells us the story of another plot – one that could have prevented the Great War altogether. Uncle Sándor (Tony Wredden)…