We are honoured to announce that Jan Englert will be the Honorary Guest of Polish Film Festival North America 2026, and our guest at the opening night of the festival.
Few careers run through Polish cinema and theatre as completely as his. He was fourteen when Andrzej Wajda cast him in Kanał in 1957 — a debut that placed a schoolboy inside one of the defining works of the Polish Film School. Nearly seventy years later, he is still working.
Born in Warsaw on 11 May 1943, Englert graduated from the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in 1964. On screen, audiences know him from Salt of the Black Earth, Pearl in the Crown, Nights and Days and Wajda’s Katyń. On stage he passed through the Polish Theatre and the Contemporary Theatre in Warsaw before joining the National Theatre in 1997 — the institution he has led as Artistic Director since 2003.
He has also spent his life teaching. Generations of Polish actors came through his classes, and in 2001 the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts in Moscow named him an honorary professor. That same year he received the Order of Polonia Restituta.
Festival audiences will meet him twice over. Beyond his presence as our guest, the programme includes „Jan Englert. Spróbuję jeszcze raz pofrunąć”, Maciej Dancewicz’s documentary portrait of the actor, with Beata Ścibakówna, Helena Englert, Anna Dymna, Maja Komorowska, Małgorzata Kożuchowska, Danuta Stenka and Ewa Wiśniewska speaking about him.
There is a symmetry to this invitation that we did not plan. 2026 is the Year of Andrzej Wajda, and the actor we welcome as our Honorary Guest is the boy Wajda put in front of a camera in 1957.
He will join us in person when the festival opens on 6 November 2026, the evening of „Lalka”.
