Mikołaj Trzaska to Receive the Marshal’s Film Award

The award recipient is a musician, multi-instrumentalist and film music composer, as well as a three-time winner of the Polish Film Awards – the Eagles – in the Best Music category.

He will receive the Pola Negri Film Award of the Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region on 18 October (Sunday) during the 15th Fonomo Music & Film Festival in Bydgoszcz. Following the ceremony, the award winner will meet with the audience in a conversation hosted by Marcin Szymczak. The event will conclude with a screening of Monika Pawluczuk’s documentary “The End of the World”, featuring music by Trzaska.

Mikołaj Trzaska was born on 7 April 1966 in Gdańsk. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, but did not complete his degree. At the same time, he taught himself to play the saxophone and ultimately decided to pursue a career in music. Together with Tymon Tymański, for more than a decade he co-created the legendary band Miłość, regarded as one of the most important groups on the Polish yass scene. He recorded five albums with Miłość, including two with renowned American jazz musician Lester Bowie, as well as the music for the film “Sztos” (1997). In 1993, he founded his own group Łoskot, combining jazz with the energy of punk and rock, and a year later began performing with Tymański as the duo Masło, playing musical standards in their own avant-garde interpretations. In 1996, he recorded his first solo album, “Cześć, cześć, cześć”. Toward the end of the first decade of the 21st century, he became interested in traditional Jewish music, which he performed with his bands Ircha and Shofar. He plays alto saxophone and bass clarinet. He has performed and recorded with many prominent artists from across the broad music scene, including Leszek Możdżer, Peter Brötzmann, Marcin and Bartłomiej Oleś, Tomasz Stańko, Ken Vandermark, Joe McPhee, Fisz and Emade.

Mikołaj Trzaska has been composing film music for many years and regularly collaborates with acclaimed director Wojciech Smarzowski, who was also a recipient of the Marshal’s Film Award in 2025. Trzaska created the soundtracks for Smarzowski’s acclaimed films “The Dark House”, “Rose”, “Traffic Department”, “The Mighty Angel”, “Volhynia”, “Clergy”, “The Wedding II” and “Good House”. He has received the Eagle statuette – the prestigious Polish Film Award – three times in the Best Music category: in 2017 for “Volhynia”, in 2019 for “Clergy”, and in 2026 for “Good House”.

He has also collaborated, among others, with Borys Lankosz (“Obcy VI”) and with Szymon Uliasz and Magdalena Gubała (“Ścinki”), who jointly directed the biographical documentary about Trzaska, “The Internal Ear” (2016). He also composed the music for Paweł Maślona’s award-winning film “Kos” (2024), which was partly filmed in our region, in the area around Włocławek.

This year, the Pola Negri Film Award of the Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region has already been presented to Zbigniew Suszyński, Magdalena Czerwińska, Łukasz Simlat and Marian Opania.

Dariusz Czołgowski
Promotion Department

16 September 2026