Polish filmmaker Łukasz Kowalski is developing Children of the Black Garden, a new feature documentary rooted in the toxic legacy of Silesia’s industrial past, and the hidden story of a doctor who exposed mass lead poisoning among children in the 1970s.
Produced by Anna Mazerant and Kowalski himself through 4.30 Studio, the project is among the titles being presented at Millennium Docs Against Gravity’s Progress Pitching Session in Warsaw, scheduled for May 8. The event offers a platform for creative documentaries with international potential, but Children of the Black Garden is already built around a strikingly cinematic proposition: a private family discovery that opens onto a much larger story of environmental crime, state silence and inherited trauma.
The film follows Agnieszka, a choreographer and theatre-maker who, one year after the death of her grandmother, returns to her childhood home and discovers a set of mysterious binders labelled with her own name. Inside are patient records and coded medical data that her grandmother, Dr Jolanta Wadowska-Król, continued to compile in secret until her death. The discovery pushes Agnieszka to ask whether the material was left as a personal legacy, an unfinished investigation or a request to continue the work.
That work leads back to Silesia (a region of Central Europe, located primarily in south-western Poland) in the 1970s and to events described in the project materials as “the Polish Chernobyl” — likely the largest ecological disaster in post-war Poland, affecting up to 250,000 people. At the centre of the scandal was the Szopienice smelter, whose toxic impact on the surrounding population was ignored or suppressed for years. While lead exposure was treated as a problem for industrial workers, the symptoms appearing among children — including severe anaemia, neurological damage and cognitive impairments — were largely disregarded.
It was the late Wadowska-Król, then a young paediatrician and now sometimes described as the “Polish Erin Brockovich”, who recognised the signs of severe lead poisoning in her patients. According to the project, some of the children she treated had toxin levels exceeding safe limits by up to 900%. Her efforts helped save thousands of children, but also brought her into conflict with the communist authorities, who worked to contain the scandal and silence its consequences.
Children of the Black Garden approaches this history through Agnieszka’s present-day investigation. She sets out to decode her grandmother’s records, identify those responsible, build alliances with experts and gain the trust of surviving patients — the so-called “lead children” — many of whom never received compensation or support from the state. The film will follow her as she tries to convince people that justice, however uncertain or belated, is still worth pursuing.
At the same time, Agnieszka’s artistic practice becomes part of the process. As a choreographer and theatre-maker, she begins developing a stage work about her grandmother and hopes to involve former patients in confronting their memories through performance. The investigation therefore becomes not only a search for truth, but also a form of artistic mourning and transmission, shaped by Agnieszka’s deep bond with the woman whose work she is now trying to understand.
The film’s contemporary emotional stakes are intensified by Agnieszka’s personal struggle with infertility. As she undergoes fertility treatment and IVF, she begins to question whether environmental toxins such as lead and cadmium may still be affecting her generation. The film’s three central threads — the grandmother’s hidden archive, Agnieszka’s investigation and her attempt to conceive — will intersect.
The filmmakers describe the project as an intimate observational documentary rather than a conventional historical exposé. The film will stay close to Agnieszka as the story develops, allowing the narrative to emerge through lived moments, gestures and emotional shifts rather than explanatory voice-over or traditional interviews. The final structure will be shaped during editing, depending on how both the investigation and the IVF process evolve.
Visually, Children of the Black Garden will contrast the dark, textured landscapes of Silesia — former industrial sites, decaying infrastructure and post-industrial neighbourhoods — with the sterile, controlled spaces of IVF clinics, laboratories and academic institutions. The project materials also identify air as a key symbolic motif: smoke, dust, vapour and wind will be used to make visible the unseen forces of environmental toxicity and inherited contamination.
For Kowalski, the project continues his interest in character-driven documentary storytelling and social investigation. His feature-length debut The Pawnshop screened at nearly 100 international festivals and won 25 awards, including the Grand Prix at MDAG and Best Film from Central and Eastern Europe at Astra. The film also received IDA Award nominations for Best Film and Best Director, as well as a Doc Alliance Award nomination at Cannes.
Kowalski previously spent more than 16 years in Polish television, directing over 200 social reports and documentaries. For six years, he led a team focused on missing persons cases, an experience that shaped his approach to investigative narratives and stories built around ordinary people caught in wider social systems.
Producer Anna Mazerant also worked on The Pawnshop. On Children of the Black Garden, she is overseeing production, financing strategy and international co-production development.
