Wiedźmin (The Hexer) | |
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Release poster
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Directed by | Marek Brodzki |
Produced by | Paweł Poppe Lew Rywin |
Written by | Michał Szczerbic (uncredited) |
Starring |
Michał Żebrowski Zbigniew Zamachowski Maciej Kozłowski |
Music by | Grzegorz Ciechowski |
Cinematography | Bogdan Stachurski |
Edited by | Wanda Zeman |
Production
company |
Heritage Films
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Distributed by | Vision Film Distribution |
Release date
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Running time
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130 minutes |
Country | Poland |
Language | Polish |
Budget |
zł 18,820,000 (USD$4.6 million) |
Wiedźmin (The Hexer or The Witcher in English) is a 2001 Polish fantasy film by director Marek Brodzki, starring Michał Żebrowski as main character Geralt of Rivia. The story is based on the books and stories of The Witcher written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.
The film is essentially the then-unreleased TV series chopped into about 2 hours, and received very poor reviews from both fans and critics. Sapkowski himself in several interviews laconically expressed his negative opinion about the film: "I can answer only with a single word, an obscene, albeit a short one." "I am a Polish Catholic, it is Lent now; I cannot utter swear words."
The 13-episode TV series came out the following year. The series was much more coherent than the confusing film, but was still considered a failure mostly due to the film's already bad reputation and due to vast changes to the source material. However, critics praised the acting and music by Grzegorz Ciechowski.
The TV series and the film were loosely based on Andrzej Sapkowski's book series The Witcher (Wiedźmin).