Prominent Poles presented with prizes
PR dla Zagranicy
Grzegorz Siwicki
20.06.2018 08:25
The Poland Now (Teraz Polska) Foundation has presented its annual "Prominent Poles" Prizes.
Michał Heller (left), Kamil Stoch (centre) and Jerzy Skolimowski (right) at the awards ceremony in Warsaw on Monday. Photo: PAP/Jakub Kamiński
They go to outstanding figures whose personal achievements enhance Poland’s international standing and prestige.
The 2018 awards went to Catholic priest and philosopher Michał Heller, film director Jerzy Skolimowski, and ski jumper Kamil Stoch.
Heller, 82, studies the relationships between science and faith, physics and cosmology, and philosophy and theology.
He is the recipient of the 2008 Templeton Prize. He donated the USD 1.6 million in prize money to establish an academic centre in the southern Polish city of Kraków.
Skolimowski is among Europe’s leading film directors of the older generation. Three of his films,The Shout, Moonlighting and The Lightship, won awards at the Cannes Festival in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2008, he made his comeback to filmmaking after a lapse of 17 years with Four Nights with Anna, Essential Killing, and 11 Minutes.
A versatile artist, Skolimowski is also an actor and a painter, with many one-man exhibitions to his credit in the United States, Greece, France, Italy and Poland.
Stoch is Poland’s top ski jumper with many spectacular successes to his name. They include three Olympic gold medals, two overall World Cup titles and two World Championship golds. He was voted Poland’s Athlete of the Year 2014 and 2017.
(mk/gs)