The Coal’s Daughter

Twenty-year-old Olivia faces future in the dying Polish mining industry. She follows her mother into the archaic, male-dominated mine. Sorting scrap and working the machines above ground, she steps into a generational role. Olivia is torn between this family tradition and the promise of freedom whispered by one of her four sisters.
Her journey quietly mirrors the changing seasons, with Max Richter's rendition of The Four Seasons underscoring the inevitable life shifts.

  • Aneta Elzbieta Nowicka (spelled Novitzka)
    Director
  • Aneta Nowicka
    Writer
  • Jacek Kucharski
    Producer
  • Aneta Nowicka
    Key Cast
    "Aneta Nowicka"
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 6 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    June 30, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    80,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Poland
  • Country of Filming:
    Poland
  • Language:
    Polish
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Koszalin Film Festival
    Koszalin
    Polish premiere
    Best Pictures
Director Biography - Aneta Elzbieta Nowicka (spelled Novitzka)

Born in post-Soviet Poland, I escaped a coal-mining town to become a TV reporter, visual artist, and film director. My work has been showcased in galleries internationally, winning awards like the main photography prize at the Biennale in Argentina. After leaving TV, I focused on art videos and then documentaries, highlighting marginalized voices. My path as a visual artist sparked a passion for storytelling through film, a dream that’s driven me since childhood.
Berlin, Warsaw, New York, Cannes, and Miami. Her debut documentary, The Coal’s Daughter, won an award for its precise and compelling visual vision highlighting marginalized voices. Her latest debut documentary, The Coal’s Daughter, won an award for its precise and compelling visual vision. She is interested in making documentaries that push the boundaries of the genre, breaking free from clichés.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

My debut documentary was a deeply personal pursuit to shed light on a neglected reality—the lives of women performing grueling physical labor in mines above ground. For decades, this marginalized group existed in the shadow of the celebrated underground coal miners, who earned three times more and were honored with distinct rituals, awards, and traditions.
The story of female pit workers remained untold and largely unacknowledged, even by someone like me, born and raised in the shadow of a coal mine. This social invisibility formed the foundation of my narrative, which I sought to weave into a more universal and layered tale.
Researching the departments above ground, I was struck by the paradoxical beauty of the industrial world—a stark interplay of colossal machinery and haunting, post-industrial landscapes. The coal mine itself emerged as a complex character, at once majestic and oppressive, its presence central to the story’s texture.
My vision was to collaborate with the cinematographer to craft a visual language that captured this tension and to structure the film in harmony with its environment. I imagined the narrative unfolding like a 19th-century novel: a sequence of seasons enriched by vivid imagery and underscored by Max Richter’s music reimagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. This structure, I believed, would give depth and resonance to the story of a young woman navigating the traditions and burdens of coal mining heritage.