From her Oscar-nominated Holocaust films, Europa, Europa and In Darkness, to her most recent work about Soviet repression in Czechoslovakia, Agnieszka Holland focuses on the unconventional human stories that illuminate larger historical events. But that wasn't always her plan. She was born in 1948, the year Stalinism took hold in Poland. Her mother was Catholic and her father Jewish - something she discovered only by accident. Growing up in Warsaw in the 1950s and '60s, Holland had no time for politics. She believed art was something separate from the burning issues and noisy arguments that occupied her idealistic parents and their friends. It wasn't until she experienced the Prague Spring, while at film school in Czechoslovakia, that her consciousness was awakened.

From the Curio.ca streaming audio-visual collection.