Jan Czarlewski
Born in 1988, Jan Czarlewski is a French-Polish director and screenwriter working between Paris and Warsaw. He enjoys exploring the offbeat and finding irony in both documentaries and fiction. He graduated from ECAL (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne) in 2012.
His short films, The Ambassador & I (L’Ambassadeur & moi) and Stammering Love (L’Amour Bègue), were notably awarded the Golden and Silver Leopard at the Locarno Festival. The Ambassador & I and another short film, Operation Commando, were both nominated twice for the Swiss Film Award in the “Best Short Film” category. Between 2015 and 2016, he directed a 50-minute documentary about a popular Polish polar adventurer who walked across Europe from Russia to Santiago de Compostela; it was watched by several million viewers on TVP1 (Poland).
From 2017 to 2019, he worked on the most ambitious historical archive documentary series made in Poland since 1989—Polskie 100 lat (“Poland’s 100 Years”), where he was responsible for writing, archival research, and directing eight out of forty-two 30-minute episodes.
He was supported by the Groupe Ouest in developing Welcome in North Korea, co-written with Carlotta Verny.
A travaillé avec...
Welcome in North Korea
Sélection Annuelle 2020
In a quiet residential suburb of London, where all the red-brick houses look alike, hides a strange embassy. Outside, there is democracy; inside, you’re in North Korea. And North Korean diplomats don’t have it easy amid the temptations of this bourgeois, capitalist global city. After new nuclear tests ordered by Pyongyang, the embassy’s second-in-command, Seol, 52 years old—efficient yet anxious—comes up with the idea to organize an ambitious art exhibition and invite a delegation of artists to help “restore” the country’s image. This becomes the perfect opportunity to bring over his son, Tae-il, a painter, and reunite the family. But for Tae-il to come, the regime demands that Seol send his daughter So-hyun, a high schooler in love with an English boy, back to the homeland. Seol starts to conceive the escape from the regime with his wife and children.