DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
Józefina Gocman - Dicks PSC
Originally from Poland and now based between Mississippi and Louisiana, she works across the United States and Europe and is a member of the Polish Society of Cinematographers.
Over the past fifteen years, she has worked on feature films, documentaries, television, commercials, and music videos. She enjoys working with both natural and creatively shaped light, always looking for the visual language that feels right for the story. For her, every film should have its own atmosphere, character, and soul.
A graduate of the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School, she has filmed across Europe, South Asia, Africa, and North and South America—from glaciers and remote locations to studio sets. Films she has worked on have screened and received awards at festivals around the world.
Her path into cinematography wasn’t a straight one. Before film school, she represented Poland in alpine skiing and became a multiple national champion. She also studied psychology and spent two years working as a lighting technician. These experiences continue to shape the way she approaches people, light, and the unpredictable nature of filmmaking.
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About
Selcted
FILMOGRAPHY
75th Locarno Film Festival, Winner of the Best First Future - Special Mention Award.
"Amidst a global pandemic, John loses his girlfriend to suicide, and moves back to his native Mississippi.We accompany John on that journey against the backdrop of a society also going through its collective confusion, loss, anger and trauma. The tension-filled air is thick with ghosts from the past that now need to be addressed. John's own process of grief leads him from denial through to self-reckoning. Acceptance- and the hope of peace." 2022https://www.locarnofestival.ch/LFF/locarno75/program-75/film.html?fid=1289413&l=en&eid=75
International premiere - Film Festival Rotterdam, Bright Future section
"For Thomas, it’s all about sport. The young high-jumper sticks to the uncompromising training and dietary regime at a sports camp. We soon learn that this is creating an unhealthy situation – to put it mildly. It’s clear from the start that there’s something very wrong in this boy’s life. Not only does he regularly lock himself away to self-harm, or practise leaving a voice-mail for his absent father – the military-style control exercised by his mother, Margot, is absolutely suffocating. Both for Thomas, and for the viewer.
The latter is thanks in part to the alienating film style used by debut director Leri Matehha. This distinctive stylisation in Thomas der Hochspringer has a tragicomic quality, similar to the films of Roy Andersson, although here the undertone is even more excruciating. We are left with the big question: how high exactly can Thomas jump?"
(https://iffr.com/en/2021/films/thomas-der-hochspringer)
Austin Film Festival , Audience Award.
Rome Film Festival, Audience Award.
"What would you do for love? Mikołaj barely hesitates before he abandons his lowly job handing out leaflets dressed as a snowball and hops on a train in pursuit of the woman of his dreams (who has just walked by). Once aboard, we’re met with a wryly amusing and sometimes surreal series of loosely connected encounters and incidents, involving such as a pair of lost children, a tyrannical ticket inspector, a man with a child’s coffin, a compartment full of tough nuts and a runaway mouse. Will Mikołaj’s bold hopes meet with the reward they deserve, or does fate have something else in store?
Beautifully lit and shot, Columbian director Miguel J. Vélez’s first feature is a highly theatrical stab at reinventing that tried-and-tested cinema trope – ‘strangers on a train’. And he succeeds. The action is sprightly, the characters likeable, the mood hopeful and the outcome satisfying. Does it all add up to suggest a grand metaphor for the journey of life itself - or is this just a typical train journey on the Polish railway in the week before Christmas? Either way, it’s a highly entertaining ride. Up for classical music!
”…it really excels at visual comedy. From weird old men with baby-sized coffins to random outbreaks of song and dance, the film is a journey quite unlike what you may have experienced before.” - Jamal Knox, Austin Film Festival.
Chicago International Film Festival, Winner Best Director, Best Actor. Karlovy Vary International Film Festival,
Winner Best Actor, Nominee Best Film.
Haifa International Film Festival, Nominee Best Film. Camerimage, Nominee Polish Competition.
Polish Film Festival, Winner Silver Lions, Best Future Film.
"In more ways than one, the persistent ache of loss permeates “Birds Are Singing in Kigali,” a broken-surfaced, broken-hearted reflection on the Rwandan genocide that marks a heartfelt swansong for married Polish writer-directors Krzysztof Krauze and Joanna Kos-Krauze. Completed by Kos-Krauze after her husband passed away mid-production in 2014, this obliquely framed story centers on a Polish ornithologist who escapes the carnage with the refugee daughter of a slain colleague in tow, tracing their sometimes clashing attempts to process their respective traumas over the following four years. Semi-experimental in form, and sometimes trickily opaque with regard to its characters’ emotions and motivations, “Kigali” appears to bear a few scars from its tragically interrupted production, but still achieves bittersweet catharsis by its conclusion."
read more: https://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/birds-are-singing-in-kigali-review-1202487547/
The film premieres at the Koszalin Debut Films Festival 2025
Jaś Jadczak, is growing up in a unique family, both of his parents have cerebral palsy, while he is a young healthy boy. He is just reaching an age where the differences in his family start to bother him. „A Boy who runs" is a film about the journey toward acceptance, showing the process that reveals how, despite their differences, the Jadczaks are a fully-fledged, loving family. Are you able to accept the dissimilarities?
The film premieres at the Krakow Film Festival 2025
The camera leads us through the streets of Karachi and the surrounding villages. We watch the work of craftsmen cultivating techniques developed by their ancestors. We look at the precise hands of a potter, the discoloured fingers of a dye-worker, the agile hands of women. The shots, like a puzzle, form micro-stories. Here, everything has its time and rhythm, determined by the life of nature or the hustle and bustle of Karachi. Above it all, mantric chants from the temple in honour of Shah Abdul Latif Bhita float.
Human Rights Watch Film Festival
"Anna Konik’s latest film entitled Silence Heard Loud
teaches us the rudiments of how to look and listen.
You only see if you watch diligently, and you only hear
if you listen attentively. The ability to truly listen to
and really see the Other as an individual, to recognize
each of them as a person with a unique history, is
the only chance to cross the invisible barriers of
stereotypes, prejudices and exclusion which hamper the
development of empathy and kindness.
(From the text ‘Let Them Become Part of My Experience"
by Łukasz Kropiowski; art historian, curator of the Contemporary Art
Gallery in Opole.)
Krakow Film Festival. Winner Polish National Competition.
Polish Film Festival in America. Winner.
Festival du court métrage de Clermont-Ferrand Winner Special Mention Award.
Koszalin Debut Films Festival. Winner Best Documentary.
Camerimage, Special screening.
"Dust is a study of the way that every human body must go through from the moment of death to the funeral. In Jakub Radej’s film, the consecutive stages of the way (mortuary, morgue, cemetery) are juxtaposed with a bureaucratic approach to the property of the deceased. A detached account of the fate of material objects that belonged to the deceased is presented in an open form, which may also include a question about the meaning of life and a reflection on the loneliness of people who have no one to bid them farewell."
