He then went on to study directing, from 1974 to 1978, at what was then known as the State Higher School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź.

He was well-known in the nineteen seventies as a music presenter, fronting two of Poland’s most renowned festivals, Sopot and Opole, amongst others. He was also a familiar voice on the radio, presenting such programmes as Radiowy magazyn przebojów (Radio Hits Round-Up) and he was the only Pole to be invited to host a show on Radio Luxembourg.

In 1988, together with Juliusz Machulski and Jacek Moczydłowski, he founded Zebra, an independent filmmaking unit. 1989 saw it adopt the name of Zebra Film Studio, under which it continues to operate to this day, with Jacek Bromski serving as Literary Director.

Film works
In 1980, he collaborated with Jerzy Gruza on directing a Polish-Belgian-British co-production of a musical film, Alicja, based on motifs from Lewis Carroll’s book. In 1984, he made a full-length television film, Funeral Party, winning the Debut award at the Polish Feature Films Festival in Gdańsk in 1985 for the work.

His next two films, the thriller Kill Me, Cop and The Art of Loving, a romantic comedy, enjoyed excellent audience figures and, to this day, they remain amongst the top Polish cinema favourites from the nineteen eighties. The public ranked The Art of Loving the best film pf 1988 and Kill Me Cop received a Ministry of Culture and Art award.

Between 1991 and 1993, Bromski directed the Polish Cuisine television serial and the film of the same title. A panorama following the fortunes and vicissitudes of several Polish families from the Stalinist era right up to the early nineteen nineties, the serial won the viewers’ vote for the most popular drama of 1993. His next two films, Children and Fishes and In Heaven as it is on Earth, comedies set in the new, post-communist Polish reality, are both tremendous audience favourites. In Heaven as it is on Earth, an affectionate picture of a Polish province in the borderlands with Belarus, received seven awards at the Gdynia Film Festival.

It’s Me, the Thief, a digressive comedy about a teenage car thief, garnered more festival awards for its director-screenwriter than any other in his entire output to date. In 2001, it took the Grand Prix at the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, as well as the Best Script award and the International Catholic Organisation of Cinema Jury's Award. A few months later, it received the Best Screenplay and Best Director awards at the Wine Country Film Festival in California. The Career of Nikos Dyzm, a political satire, was one of the greatest cinema hits of 2002. In 2005, he made the first-ever Polish-Chinese co-production, Love in the Year of the Tiger.

Made in 2007, God’s Little Garden, the follow-on from In Heaven as it is on Earth, drew audiences of more that three hundred and twelve thousand and won the Jury’s Special Award at the Gdynia Film Festival. In April 2009, it received the Best Foreign Film award and the Special Jury Award at the WorldFest-Houston International Film and Video Festival. God’s Little Village, the film which completed the Eastern borderlands trilogy, received the Best Director award at the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival in China. The following year saw Bromski returning to the thriller genre with a screen adaptation of Zygmunt Miłoszewski’s novel, Entanglement, which went on general release in 2011. In 2013, he made One Way Ticket to the Moon, a story about young people. Set in the reality of communist Poland it takes the events of July 1964, when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the Moon, as it backdrop. At the 38th Gdynia Film Festival it won him the Screenplay Award, which was presented to him by jury member Christopher Hampton. It also won the Project London award for the film with the greatest potential for distribution in Great Britain and Ireland and it was distributed on a regular basis in the British Isles in the spring of 2014. At the same time, it was screened at the Tiburon International Film Festival in California, garnering Bromski the Best Director award.
 
In 2014, he began work on his latest film, Anatomy of Evil, a thriller inspired by events in the realities of contemporary Poland.

Jacek Bromski is also a vastly experienced producer. His co-productions with Zebra Film Studio include a number of popular and highly regarded films, such as Juliusz Machulski’s Kiler (1997), Two Kilers (1999) and Superproduction (2002), or Władysław Pasikowski’s Kroll (1991) and Pigs (1992). In his role as co-producer, he has won a Golden Lion three times at the Gdynia Film festival, receiving the statuette for Love Stories, directed by Jerzy Stuhr (1995), which won the FIORESCI Award in Venice in 1997, Debt, directed by Krzysztof Krauze (1999) and Day of the Wacko, directed by Marek Koterski (2002). He now runs his own production company, Jacek Bromski Produkcja Filmowa. He is also both a producer and artistic mentor for the debut films which are made by the Munk Studio, which operates within the structures of the Polish Filmmakers Association. They include Bartosz Konopka’s Fear of Falling and Maria Sadowska’s Women’s Day, as well as numerous shorts.

Social activity

Jacek Bromski is one of Poland’s most engaged cultural activists. He has served as president of the Polish Filmmakers Association (PFA) without pause since 1996 and, at the time of writing, in other words, 2014, he is into his fifth term of office. He has transformed the association into a powerful, integrative organisation for the professional filmmaking community and, under his incumbency, it has come to the forefront of its European peers, as well as being the most well-known and effective of its kind in Poland.

Bromski is widely known both in Poland and Europe as an expert on the audiovisual sector and on copyright and film rights. He headed the film community’s successful initiatives aimed at obtaining amendments to the copyright law and introducing the Cinema Act of 2005 and, serving as the first President of the Polish Film Institute Council from 2005 to 2008, he was inherently involved in the work on setting up that organisation. He is the founder of the Union of Audiovisual Authors and Producers (ZAPA), a collective copyright management organisation which operates within the structures of the PFA. Bromski maintains contact with Europe’s most important filmmakers’ organisations. Under his incumbency, the PFA has signed cooperation and mutual copyright protection agreements with several dozen organisations in Europe, Asia, including China, and both the Americas.

He was a member of the Cinematography Committee in the nineteen nineties and has been a vice-president of the Association Internationale des Auteurs de l'Audiovisuel. He is a member of the Federation of European Film Directors and has also served as vice-president of the Polish Audiovisual Producers’ Chamber of Commerce for many years. He is the president of the World Cinema Alliance (Alliance Mondiale du Cinema), which was founded in 2007 and a member of the Main Board of the Creative Poland Association.

Bromski sits on numerous expert committees and has collaborated with Polish and EU administrative bodies such as the Culture and Media Committee, the Prime Minister’s Office, the European Committee of Culture and Education and the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland. In 2005, he received the Gold Gloria Artis Medal for Merit in Culture and in 2011, the President of the Republic of Poland awarded him the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.

At the end of 2013, Polityka (Politics) magazine ranked Jacek Bromski one of the most influential people in Polish culture. Explaining their reasoning, the team responsible for the ranking wrote:

For seventeen years, he has been the President of the Polish Filmmakers Association (PFA), which has grown into a powerful institution during his four successive terms in office, thanks to numerous intitiatives, including the founding of ZAPA, the Union of Audiovisual Authors and Producers. The PFA co-finances the majority of the country’s most important film events, it supports production via the Munk Studio, amongst other channels, and it runs a publishing operation and other economic activities.

Selected, important prizes and decorations

Festival awards

• 2013: ONE WAY TOCKET TO THE MOON, Gdynia Film Festival; Screenplay award 
• 2013: ONE WAY TICKET TO THE MOON, Gdynia Film Festival; the Project London award for the film with the greatest potential for distribution in Great Britain and Ireland 
• 2009: GOD’S LITTLE VILLAGE, Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, Nanchang; Best Director award 
• 2009: GOD'S LITTLE VILAAGE, Comedy Film Festival, Lubomierz; Golden Pomegranate 
• 2009: GOD’S LITTLE GARDEN, WorldFest-Houston International Film and Video Festival, Houston; 
• 2009: GOD’S LITTLE GARDEN, WorldFest-Houston International Film and Video Festival, Houston; Best Full-Length Foreign Film 
• 2007: GOD’S LITTLE GARDEN, Gdynia Film Festival; Special Jury Award 
• 2006: IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH, Comedy Film Festival, Lubomierz; Silver Sickle, second place in the competition for the best comedy of the decade 
• 2002: THE CAREER OF NIKOS DYZMA, Comedy Film Festival, Lubomierz; Silver Pomegranate 
• 2001: IT’S ME, THE THIEF, Mar del Plata International Film Festival; Screenplay award 
• 2001: IT’S ME, THE THIEF, Mar del Plata International Film Festival; the Golden Astor Grand Prix 
• 2001: IT’S ME, THE THIEF, Wine Country Film Festival, California; Best Screenplay in the international competition 
• 1999: IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH, Tarnowa Film Awards; Special Award, the Silver Leliwit Statuette for the acting ensemble of the Białystok Puppet Theatre 
• 1999: IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH, Prowincjonalia Film Festival, Słupca; Golden Jańcio Grand Prix, awarded by the audience 
• 1999: IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH, Prowincjonalia Film Festival, Słupca; Journalists’ Award 
• 1999: IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH, Comedy Film Festival, Lubomierz; Bronze Pomegranate 
• 1998: IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH, Lubuski Summer of Film, Łagów; Bronze Raceme 
• 1998: IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH, Gdynia Film Festival; Director’s award 
• 1998: IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH, Gdynia Film Festival; President of Gdynia’s Award for the Best Comedy 
• 1998: IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH, Gdynia Film Festival; the Radio Gdańsk Golden Claqueur for the director of the film receiving the longest ovation 
• 1998: IN HEAVEN AS IT IS ON EARTH, Polish Film Festival, Chicago; Golden Teeth audience award 
• 1998: KILL ME, COP; Ministry of Culture award for a feature film production in 1987 
• 1985: FUNERAL PARTY, Gdynia Film Festival; Directorial debut award in the television film category

State decorations

• 2005: Gloria Artis Medal for Merit in Culture
• 2011: Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta

Literature 
Maciej Maniewski, Umie trzymać w napięciu - woli bawić (I know how to keep them on the edge of their seats. I’d rather amuse), “Kino” (“Cinema" magazine), 07/08/1999
Anna Wróblewska, Oko szeroko otwarte (Eye Wide Open), Warsaw 2009
Konrad J. Zarębski, Kręci nas „Zebra” (Zebra’s Filming Us), Warsaw 2008
Filmowcy. Polskie kino według jego twórców (Filmmakers. Polish Cinema According to its Creators), Warsaw 2006