Jerzy Skolimowski has traced an indelible route in world cinema, having an anxious, undisciplined and independent spirit combined with a personal vision for the art of cinema and an authentic, as well as modern film production.

Born on May 5th, 1938 in Lodz and after the war, he starts his adventurous education in Poland and for a short time period, in Bohemia, where he follows his mother, a cultural attache in Prague. Afterwards, he is registered in the Department of History of the Material Culture, and begins his professional occupation with one of his greatest passions, boxing, taking part in thirty boxing matches for newcomer boxers. (Besides, boxing appears very often in his films.) Moreover, at the same time, he passionately attends the jam sessions, where he meets and is bound by a friendship with the great composer and afterwards his collaborator, Krzysztof Komeda, and tours throughout Poland with his band.

In 1958 and 1959, he issues two poetic collections and a one-act play and becomes a member of the Pole Authors Association. In Poland, he accidentally meets the famous film director, Andrzej Wajda, and the author, Jerzy Andrzejewsji, with whom he will cooperate in the script of the film Innocent Enchanter, and in which he makes his first appearance as an actor in the role of a young boxer. Until then, he had never be interested in cinema, but after being urged by the great film director Andrzej Munk, he registers in the famous Lodz School and in 1961, shoots his first short film under the title Boxing (First award in the Sports Films Festival of Budapest.) During the same period, he works with Roman Polanski on the script of the film Knife in the Water, which is directed two years later.

In parallel with his studies, he starts working on the script of his first featyre film, Rysopis (1964), in which he introduces an unfamiliar character for the given state of the Polish cinema in the communist age: Antrei Lesits, a rebel without cause, an exiled king in his own country played by Skolimowski himself. With this film and Walkower that follows, (he also stars in the role of Lesits), he receives international recognition, as one of the greatest representatives of the nouvelle-vague of 60s, the most fertile decade in the post-war cinema.

The following year, his fame is established at the Bergamo Festival, where his third film, Bariera wins the first award. Next came Le depart, the first film directed abroad (Belgium) and awarded with the Gold Bear at the Berlin Festival. During the same year in Poland he films Rece do gory (Haut Les Mains), a film that marks his life. The film was officially chosen to participate in the Venice Festival, forbidded its projection and participation but the Polish authorities a few days before the beginning of the Festival. Skolimowski stated that he would not make films in Poland until the censors allowed its projection. (Something that happened 14 years later, when in 1981 the film's director presented a second version adding a preface filmed in London, Warsaw and Beirut and constitutes a personal meditation for the political situation in Poland during that period.)

After the prohibition of the Rece do gory (Haut Les Mains), Skolimowski starts a second period of creation in England, but he will never break the bonds with his country and the culture in the framework of which he was formed. His international career is developed as he passes through different countries (Chekoslovakia, Italy, Germany, England, U.S.A.) and is marked by conflicts with the producers (The adventures of Gerard-1970) but always returned with extraordinary masterpieces, as the Deep End (1970) which is considered to be one of the most remarkable and cult films. His attempt to transfer the work of Nabokov, King, Queen, Knave (1972) to cinema, was a turn in his evolution, which continued for the following seven years, when the director was moving between England and Poland seeing his various ambitious plans fail, like the transfer of the classical novel of Dostoevskij, The Player.

This period closes with the pioneering and excellent filmThe Shout (1978), perhaps his most obtrusive and most superbly structured creation, with which he wins the Special Award of the Cannes Festival Committee. During the following year, he filmed Moonlighting (1982) in England which the great Nobel prize-winner poet, Milos, has called "a real diamond" and is considered by many as a masterpiece but was unfairly judged at the Cannes Festival, winning only the Script Award. In his following film, Success is the Best Revenge (1984), he testifies his personal view about the coup d'etat of Jaruselski and the political situation of his country. In 1985, he directs his first immiscibly American film, The Lightship, which won the Grand Award of the Venice Festival Committee, while Robert Duval was presented with the award for Best Actor.

At the beginning of 90s, he returns to his country, where after 24 years of self-exile he makes his first Polish film which is about a risky remake of Ferdydurke, the masterpiece by Pole author Witold Gombrovwicz. He also undertakes the production of the film The Hollow Men, in which his two sons, Josef Kay and John Yorick, who had also previously cooperated with their father, make their appearance as directors. At the same time, he starts his cooperation with the Warsaw Theater Studio. Lately, and after being disappointed by the failure of a plan based on a classical text of the romance school of Polish literature, he returns to California, where he now lives permanently.

Throughout his career in cinema, he continued to write literary texts and scripts, to paint and collect works of art, but never stopped playing poker and occupying himself with various kinds of sports (even coaching two amateur football teams in Warsaw and London). Moreover, he plays various roles in the films A State of Civil War (1981), White Nights (1985), The Big Hit (1987) and the more recent Mars Attacks, L.A. without Map by Mika Kaourismaki, and Before the Night Falls by Julian Shnabel which was awarded in this year's Venice Festival. Lately he has been working on the script of his new film, inspired by Bulgakov's book, Dog's Heart.