Polish-born British film director and scriptwriter Paweł Pawlikowski has received the MEDIA Prize for European Talent. It was presented to him during the Cannes Festival by Androulla Vassiliou, the new European Commissioner for Culture and Education.

The prize is given to filmmakers of an outstanding ‘European potential’, whose works are the by-word of the cinema art of the highest calibre.

Pawlikowski was awarded for his latest film Sister of Mercy. Set in Poland in the 1960s, it tells of unsuccessful attempts by communist secret police to recruit a young nun as an informer.

Pawlikowski was born in Warsaw in 1957. Having left Poland at the age of 14, he first lived in Germany and Italy, before moving to Britain. He studied literature and philosophy. In the mid-1980s he took up film-making, initially focusing on documentaries and then moving to docudrama and feature films.

His Last Resort (2000) and My Summer of Love (2004) won BAFTA awards. (mk)

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