Mia Wasikowska will be the special guest of the 18th edition of the Mastercard OFF CAMERA International Festival of Independent Cinema in Krakow. During the Opening Gala, which will take place on April 25, 2025, at Kijów Cinema, the Australian actress with Polish roots will accept in person the ‘Against the Current’ Special Award, which is given to artists who follow their original path and set new directions in world cinema.

The actress and director will appear at the Krakow festival as the protagonist of the Opening Film. It will be Bergman Island directed by Mia Hansen-Løve – a meta-film story about the boundaries between fiction and reality, which premiered in the Main Competition of the Cannes Film Festival. In the film, the actress creates one of her most complex and multidimensional roles.

Justification of the awarding of the Special Prize ‘Against the Current’ to Mia Wasikowska by Grzegorz Stępniak, artistic director of Mastercard OFF CAMERA

It is a real pleasure to award this year’s ‘Against the Current’ award, as its name already suggests, for those who not only have the courage to follow their own artistic paths, but also set new trends in world cinema, to Australian actress with Polish roots – Mia Wasikowska.

Over her distinguished 20 years career, she has worked with some of the most prominent directors and filmmakers of contemporary art cinema, including Gus Van Sant, Tim Burton, Lisa Cholodenko, Park Chan-Wook, Jim Jarmusch, David Cronenberg, Mia Hansen-Love and Jessica Hausner. Their films, screened at major international festivals, led by Cannes, Venice, or Toronto, have firmly established themselves in the canon of recent cinema. And films such as Stoker, Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right, Jane Eyre and Albert Nobbs have won a series of prestigious awards, led by Oscars and Golden Globes. In addition, they manage to combine the values and approach inherent in festival cinema with commercial potential that reaches a wide audience. Which is a rarity and a great art.

Much of this is due to Wasikowska’s acting, who’s unforgettable, melancholy, deep gaze can convey more than dozens of words, while at the same time her ephemeral and powerful presence often crosses the boundaries of conventions and genres, giving a unique quality to costume and thriller films, comedies of manners, psychological dramas, or thrillers.

At the same time, we are very pleased that the Opening Film of the 18th Edition of Mastercard OFF CAMERA is Mia Hansen-Love’s Bergman Island, in which Wasikowska plays a multi-dimensional, complex character. This meta-film production, in which the boundaries between fiction and reality blur, talks indirectly about the power and magic of cinema, becoming an original tribute to it.

MIA WASIKOWSKA – independent despite worldwide success.

Australian actress, born and raised in Canberra. Daughter of photographers Marzena Wasikowska and John Reid. At the age of nine, Mia attended ballet classes, dreaming of becoming a professional ballerina. However, she gave up this dream at the age of fourteen due to an injury. She then turned to acting. Her breakthrough role was playing the title character in the 2010 adaptation of Lewis Carrol’s book, Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter. For this role, the actress received the AFI Award for Best International Actress. In 2015, Mia returned to her role in the sequel, Alice on the Other Side of the Mirror, directed by James Bobin.

Her vast filmography includes roles in such films as: Piercing by Nicolas Pesce, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, Damsel by David Zellner, The Man with the Iron Heart by Cedric Jimenez, the costume thriller Crimson Peak by Guillermo Del Toro, Mrs. Bovary by Sophie Barthes, Maps to the Stars by David Cronenberg, The Double by Richard Ayoade, Tracks by John Curran, Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch, Stoker by Chan-wook Park, Gangster by John Hillcoat, Albert Nobbs by Rodrigo Garcia, Jane Eyre by Cary Fukunaga, Restless by Gus Van Sant, The Kids Are All Right by Lisa Cholodenko, That Evening Sun by Scott Teems, September by Peter Carstairs, Rogue by Greg McLean and Suburban Mayhem by Paul Goldman. Mia also starred in the first season of the HBO series Therapy.

Recent productions with her cast include Mia Hansen-Love’s Bergman Island, which premiered in the Main Competition of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, as well as in Robert Connolly’s Blueback, based on Tim Winton’s book of the same name – for her role in this film, Mia received a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 2024 AACTA Awards. Audiences could also see her in Roger Michell’s Blackbird where she starred alongside Kate Winslet, Sam Neill and Susan Sarandon, the Netflix film The Devil All the Time with Chris Evans, Robert Pattinson and Tom Holland, and Mirrah Foulkes’ debut Judy and Punch, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and for her role in which Mia won the Film Critics Circle of Australia Award for Best Actress.

Mia Wasikowska’s latest project is Jessica Hausner’s Club Zero, which premiered in the Main Competition of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Mia made her directorial debut with the project Long, Clear View, a segment in the anthology The Turning, based on Tim Winton’s book and AACTA-nominated in 2013. Another film she directed was Afterbirth, a segment in the film Madly, an international anthology of innovative short films about stories of love. Madly premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016. In 2019, Mia will make her theatrical debut as Ralph in Sydney Theatre Company’s Lord of the Flies, directed by Kip Williams.

Mia is the winner of the Hollywood Breakthrough Actress of the Year Award and the Australians in Film Breakthrough Award. This year, Mia became an Artist-in-Residence at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS).