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Agnieszka Holland is a Polish film and TV director and screenwriter. Best recognized for her highly political contributions to Polish cinema, Holland is one of Poland's most prominent filmmakers and a Hollywood outsider. Not only is she considered to be one of the few female directors working in... Hollywood today, but is one of the only ones who are not actresses or industry insiders. Agnieszka Holland was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1948. She was the daughter of two prominent journalists, a Catholic mother and a Jewish father. Despite the religions of her parents, Holland adopted neither and was instead raised without religion. Her Jewish father’s parents were killed in the ghetto, and her mother was a Catholic who in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and was a member of the Polish Underground. Her father died under mysterious circumstances during a police interrogation when Holland was only thirteen years old. Although the official reports labeled her father’s death a suicide, many believe he was murdered, pushed from a window to his death. Holland’s mother later re-married to journalist Stanislaw Brodzki.
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