Agnieszka Grochowska Joins Cast of Lech Walesa Biopic

In Darkness star Agnieszka Grochowska has joined the cast of Andrezej Wajda’s Walesa biopic, playing Danuta Wałesa, the wife of Nobel prize-winning Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. Polish actress will re-team with Robert Wieckiewicz who stars in the title role of the country’s first democratically elected president for the period drama, which starts shooting December 1st in Warsaw and Gdansk. Veteran director Wajda, who received a lifetime achievement Academy Award in 2000 will helm the film that will reportedly be his greatest challenge in 55 years as a director. Wajda, 85, told the paper, quoting a line Walesa coined:

This will be the most difficult movie I have made in my life. I don’t want to, but I have to.

An off-Broadway Polish playwright Janusz Glowacki, who wrote the script for Wajda’s Hunting Flies has written the screenplay. The distinguished Oscar-nomined cinematographer Pawel Edelman (The Pianist) is lensing the film that will extend over a time period between the worker street protests of 1970, in which Walesa took part, to his speech before the U.S. Congress in the fall of 1989. The archive footage of Walesa will be also used for some scenes. The coincidence factor is that Danuta Walesa, who will be portrayed by Grochowska, recently published frank biography ‘Dreams and Secrets’ and also revealed that she and Lech now live largely separate lives. The Walesa biopic is scheduled for a late 2012 release in Poland.