Born in Poland in 1980, animation director and visual effects supervisor Kamil Polak studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and animation at the Polish National Film School in Łódź. Made while still a student, his short film The Birth of a Nation is frequently shown in a series showcasing the best film school movies. One of his first professional experiences was heading a team of computer animators on the British-Polish stop-motion animation Peter and the Wolf (2006), which won an Oscar for the best short animation in 2008. His short debut animation, the international production The Lost Town of Świteź, premiered at Berlinale Film Festival in 2011 and has received 20 international awards, among others those from the Palm Springs and Annecy film festivals.
Kamil Polak collaborates as animation director with Human Film, one of the leading Polish animation studios, which creates animations and visual effects for movie productions and television advertising films. Over the past ten years this collaboration has resulted in dozens of animated projects.
Since 2003 he has made animations and videos for theatre and opera productions directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski, most recently for Elektra at the 2020 and 2021 Salzburg Festival, Tristan and Isolde and Dido and Aeneas / Erwartung at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and Odyssey: A Story for Hollywood at the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw.
