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Stanisław Mucha, born May 3, 1970, in the Polish town of Nowy Targ, studied at Krakau's national theatre academy "Ludwig Solski" from 1989 to 1992, graduated in dramatic art, and became a cast member and assistant director at Krakau's national "Stary Teatr Helena Modrzejewska". During the first half of the 1990s, Mucha starred in numerous film and stage productions. From 1995 to 2000, Mucha studied directing for film and TV at HFF "Konrad Wolf" in Babelsberg. His graduation film "Mit 'Bubi' heim ins Reich" ("Back Home to the Reich, with Bubi", 2000) premiered in the Panorama programme of the 50th Berlinale. His following film, the documentary comedy "Absolut Warhola" (2001) that traces pop art icon Andy Warhol's biographical roots in Slovakia won several awards. In his 2004 film "Die Mitte" ("The Center") Mucha then went on a search for Europe's geographical center.
"Reality Shock" (2005) then went from the middle of Europe to its very edge. In the humorous documentary film Mucha portrays a couple of mavericks and eccentrics in the provincial parts of Poland who are torn out of their solitude by Polands accession to the EU. Before he started his next documentary project "Zigeuner" (2007), Mucha finished his first feature film: The poetic drama "Hope" premiered at the 2007 Moscow film festival.
He returned to documentary filmmaking with "Die Wahrheit über Dracula" (2010), in which he travels to Romania to follow the trail of the legendary vampire and its historical inspiration. After chronicling the eventful business in a modern pawn shop in "Die Pfandleiher" (2011), he made a half-hour film on street kids in Kiev for the TV documentary series "Fremde Kinder" (2012).
Mucha's next feature-length documentary "Tristia - Eine Schwarzmeer-Odyssee" (2014) took viewers on a journey along the coast of the Black Sea and through seven utterly different countries.
In 2015, Mucha shot his first fiction film since "Hope" (2007) for TV. The highly acclaimed crime film "Aus der Kurve" deals with the investigation of a child murder in a Hessian village. In November 2017 at the DOK Leipzig Festival, Mucha presented his next documentary feature "Kolyma" about the region around the Kolyma road that stretches 1,250 miles through Siberia and once connected a series of notorious Russian gulag camps.