More from Deadline<\/p>\n
Speaking in advance of the festival, Puszczy\u0144ska admits she and Pawlikowski now have established a creative shorthand and key to their ongoing collaboration has been \u201cfinding a common ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be on the same level with the artistic work you are doing because you are going on this artistic journey together,\u201d she says. \u201cThere can be tough moments when tensions are high, so you have to be unified towards the same goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fatherland, which Pawlikowski directs from a screenplay he co-wrote with Hendrik Handloegten, centers on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Zischler) and his daughter Erika (H\u00fcller). Set in the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, the two embark on a challenging and emotional road trip in a black Buick, taking them across a Germany in ruins from U.S.-dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar. Returning home after 16 years of exile in the U.S., Mann has to face not only a divided fatherland, but also a deep fracture within his own family.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very fast-moving production,\u2019 says Puszczy\u0144ska of the German-language film. \u201cAnd it was quite a long-process of shooting because we were shooting across so many locations scattered across two regions of Poland and Germany. It was a lot of jumping from place to place because, as much as we could, the process was chronological. It was challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Fatherland\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/e3ccc94cc1c9eb1f88a09111bbc5c30c.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Fatherland<\/p>\n
She credits her Polish crew as being \u201creally well organized,\u201d ensuring the 39-day shoot when as smoothly as possible.\u00a0Fatherland\u00a0had the same team and HoDs who worked across\u00a0Ida\u00a0and\u00a0Cold War, and that, she says, was integral to getting such an ambitious project across the line. \u201cIt was like coming back to the family and coming back to the people who know Pawe\u0142,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was really nice and I think everybody appreciated the way we work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pawlikowski is multilingual Puszczy\u0144ska says this film really put the Polish director in his element. \u201cEverybody was amazed that he was talking to the actors in German and then to the crew in Polish and constantly switching languages,\u201d she says. \u201cHe goes into so much detail. It\u2019s very woven and each element is in place. Everything is consistent and Pawe\u0142 takes care of every single detail. Even when he writes the script, he puts links to music in the script so we can listen in the script and in the film later. He\u2019s that kind of creator. He takes care of everything, and you can only be happy that you were a part of it and that you did your tiny job to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout her wide-ranging and open conversation with Deadline, Puszczy\u0144ska is incredibly modest, often saying how \u201cluck\u201d has played a big part during her career. She credits the Polish Film Institute as being integral to building the nation\u2019s infrastructure with its generous 30% tax credit. \u201cThey\u2019ve really helped Polish producers go from minority productions to international ones,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s also optimistic about the growth in the local production industry, citing a surge of younger producers, such as Lava Films\u2019 Mariusz Wlodarski (The Girl with the Needle), as key to the growth Poland\u2019s production landscape.<\/p>\n
But with a credit list that includes Lynch\u2019s\u00a0Inland Empire, Glazer\u2019s Oscar-winning\u00a0The Zone of Interest, and Eisenberg\u2019s\u00a0A Real Pain, which also earned two Oscars, it\u2019s hard to feel like Puszczy\u0144ska\u2019s career is down to just luck.<\/p>\n
\u201cI choose projects that deal with subjects that are important for me as a human being, and as a woman,\u201d she says. \u201cIt needs to grab me in my gut. Even if it\u2019s not perfectly written yet and there\u2019s time to develop it, I think, \u2018Let\u2019s go on this journey together.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
She continues: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter which language, whether it\u2019s German or Polish or English.\u00a0Fatherland\u00a0is a Polish film but it\u2019s a subject that is very contemporary and can translate to what\u2019s going on now in the world. Even if it\u2019s German language, it speaks to me and it speaks to people and it\u2019s part of European culture. Thomas Mann is part of European culture, and he has a lot of admirers in Poland, so language doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what I don\u2019t like is foreign projects that come to me at the very last stage and are just missing some money. I like to be a real partner and work together.\u201d<\/p>\n
First steps & what\u2019s next<\/p>\n
Puszczy\u0144ska knew from a young age that she wanted to work in the creative sector and recalls often putting photos and illustrations alongside her essays in school. She became skilled in languages and before landing a job at renowned Polish outfit Opus Film, she worked for a translation company that was responsible for putting subtitles and voiceovers to projects. \u201cIt was a really interesting job because I watched a lot of films and then had to figure out how to put the English into Polish so that people could understand, so it was a very good exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Kieran](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/183b5af5a7b2a09c14b86f9b631e99c2.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in ‘A Real Pain’<\/p>\n
She spent some time translating on international shoots coming into Poland from before she was brought aboard a commercial job for BMW North America which Opus Film was producing for the company locally. Initially, the plan was for cars to drive across the frozen lakes in Poland but because the winter had been mild, the lakes weren\u2019t frozen enough for the shoot.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were on the verge of losing this job,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I liked this job. So, I said, \u2018Let\u2019s subcontract this job with our supervision somewhere up in Northern Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n
The project ultimately ended shooting in Finland, which she oversaw during a brutally cold winter, and that savvy approach landed her a full-time job at Opus Film, where she spent nearly two decades of her career. She cut her teeth as a line producer on Lynch\u2019s 2006 title\u00a0Inland Empire\u00a0after the late director, who was a frequent attendee at Poland\u2019s Camerimage Film Festival, decided to shoot part of the film in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was winter and it was very cold, but it was beautiful,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThere was no script and he was scribbling something on paper the night before and I was begging him to give me something, so I had time to prepare. It was really challenging but it was a great challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n
She produced Pawilkowski\u2019s\u00a0Ida\u00a0and\u00a0Cold War\u00a0through Opus before leaving the outfit 10 years ago to set up her own shingle Extreme Emotions. Since then, she has built a reputation for supporting a variety of international directors who explore complex and human stories, often rooted in history and identity such as\u00a0The Zone of Interest\u00a0and\u00a0A Real Pain. She\u2019s just coming off the back of producing Polish HBO series\u00a0Women\u2019s Hell, directed by Anna Maliszewska and also produced Ido Fluk\u2019s German music-drama\u00a0K\u00f6ln 75, which premiered at Berlinale last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very lucky to work with great directors and watch their talents and the way they work,\u201d she says. \u201cBut our focus is always to be honest with ourselves, honest with the film and really deliver the best we can and the best coming out from our talents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Up next, Puszczy\u0144ska has two titles she\u2019s hoping to get off the ground: A Japanese-Polish-Canadian co-production dubbed\u00a0Idiot Son, inspired by the life of Japan\u2019s Nobel Prize-winning novelist and essayist Kenzabur\u014d \u014ce, and a yet-unnamed Yiddish-language project that is at script stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very careful and picky about the projects I chose because when I choose them, I really give my time and heart to work on them,\u201d she says. \u201cI can\u2019t just treat it like another film \u2013 I give it my all and this really the only way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Best of Deadline<\/p>\n
Sign up for Deadline’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Polish producer Ewa Puszczy\u0144ska has long been one of the country\u2019s most recognized film producers who has steadily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2851,6615,6613,6617,2096,6612,6610,6614,6611,6616,9,6618,6619],"class_list":["post-7968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-cold-war","tag-david-lynch","tag-fatherland","tag-film-producers","tag-german","tag-hanns-zischler","tag-jesse-eisenberg","tag-jonathan-glazer","tag-pawel-pawlikowski","tag-pawlikowski","tag-poland","tag-polish-film-institute","tag-thomas-mann"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}