Hanna Polak is a Polish documentary director, cinematographer, and producer born in 1967. Her remarkable career has been marked by numerous accolades and achievements. She gained international recognition for her short documentary film "The Children of Leningradsky", which tells the story of a community of homeless children living in the Leningradsky railway station in Moscow. This powerful film earned her nominations for both an Academy Award and an Emmy Award.
In 2003, Polak was awarded Best Producer of Documentary Movies at the Kraków Film Festival for her film "Railway Station Ballad". Her subsequent documentary film "The Children of Leningradsky" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) in 2004.
Polak's most recent documentary film, "Something Better to Come", received the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) Special Jury Award in 2014. The film won main prizes at several film festivals, cementing her reputation as a talented and dedicated documentary filmmaker.
Throughout her career, Polak's work has been featured on major television networks worldwide, including American HBO, ABC, Canal+, France 2, Fuji Television, ITN, TVP, TVN, Belgian Radio and TV, and many other TV stations. Her films have been screened at numerous film festivals globally, including the Sundance Film Festival, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA),Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, True/False Film Festival, and FIPA.
Polak's photography work has also received recognition, with her winning third prize in the UNICEF International Photography Competition Photo of the Year in 2006. For her cinematography work on "Stone Silence", shot in Afghanistan, she was awarded the Artistic Mastery of Photographing award from the Kiev Film Festival. For her cinematography work on "Something Better to Come", she received the Best Cinematography award from the Gdańsk DocFilm Festival and the Canon Non Fiction Frame Special Mention from the Docs Against Gravity film festival.
In addition to her filmmaking and photography work, Polak has been actively involved in charitable efforts to help unprivileged children. Her selfless work has earned her numerous awards, including the prestigious Golden Heart Award, the "Award for serving the uppermost ideals of mankind" by NTV (Russia),and the Crystal Mirror award by the Mirror magazine in Poland.
As an educator, Polak has lectured on documentary filmmaking at various universities worldwide, including the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, North Carolina, Chapel Hill; University of Guadalajara, Mexico; North Texas University; Monterey Institute of International Studies, California; Middlebury College, Vermont; University of Hawaii, Honolulu, and many others.
Polak has also served as a jury member at the Kraków Film Festival and the Document International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Glasgow, Scotland. She has been a tutor for the EsoDoc workshop and an expert for the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (Poland),evaluating documentary projects for the Polish Film Institute.
