
BORN UNDER A LUCKY MINERAL
"Born under a lucky mineral" is the title of a documentary directed by Marcin Kopeć, devoted to the life and cultural and social legacy of Ignacy Domeyko. The film, shot on location in Poland, Lithuania and Chile, is co-produced with Polish Television and will have its premiere in the fall-winter TVP schedule of 2022. The partners of the project are KGHM and LOT Polish Airlines. The premiere of the film will be, apart from wide distribution, accompanied by promotional activities.


IGNACY DOMEYKO
Ignacy Domeyko, of the Dangiel coat of arms, alias Żegota, was a Polish geologist, mineralogist, mining engineer, meteorologist, researcher of South America, the prototype of Żegota from the third part of Adam Mickiewicz's “Dziady”, rector of the University of Santiago in Chile. Domeyko left behind a rich scientific achievements in many fields. Paradoxically, the name of the scientist remains more known abroad than in Poland. Domeyko is a world-class successful man with a romantic lineage, with a great heart for people, regardless of their origin. In exile and in the new homeland - Chile, admired and loved. Strong, positive on the outside. Inside – fragile, sensitive, longing for his lost homeland.

THE YEAR OF ROMANTICISM
The Seym of the Republic of Poland made 2022 the Year of Romanticism. Domeyko was friends with Mickiewicz and Chopin, he belonged to the Philomats and Filarets, and his romantic attitude also indicates consistent, positivist work for the public good.
Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet and a Nobel Prize laureate, said of Domeyko: "how much we owe to him ... everything ... the whole industry ... organization of secondary and higher education ... He was noble ...".
The profile of Domeyko, the Great Exile, is little known in Poland. Bringing it closer not only to the Polish viewer has the features of an educational activity but also promoting the silhouettes of outstanding Poles and their achievements in the world. This constitutes the universal values of the project.
The overriding goal of the film is to present to a wide audience, both in Poland and abroad, the legacy of Ignacy Domeyko to whom more eponyms are devoted than to Kościuszko or Chopin. His merits, biography and achievements remain little known in Poland, while the cultural heritage of Domeyko in Chile is almost a cult.

TOMASZ GRZYWACZEWSKI
‘I want to touch and understand the world. In the wild Siberian taiga, an orphanage in Cameroon, ghostly unrecognized countries, the trenches of war in Ukraine. I meet people. A hunter from the Selkup people, a doctor who saved cholera patients in Mozambique, Kurdish fighters, an old woman who remembered the times of the Great Famine. I believe that there is only one way to truly discover the world: discovering another person.’
Tomasz Grzywaczewki – journalist and author of books, film scripts and scientific publications in the field of international relations, a member of the prestigious American "The Explorers Club" will follow in the footsteps of Ignacy Domeyko. Graduate of law at the University of Lodz and of the "Russian Security Studies" program at Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security in Washington DC, he reported on armed conflicts in the Donbas, Turkish Kurdistan and Nagorno-Karabakh. He is the originator of expeditions, including "Long Walk Plus Expedition" – trips from Siberia to India in the footsteps of Polish refugees from the Gulag and "Dead Road" – an expedition to the Stalinist Way of the Dead, as well as a participant in the expedition to Cameroon "Vivat Polonia 2016" in the footsteps of the Polish explorer Stefan Szolc-Rogoziński. He cooperates with numerous magazines, including the American Foreign Policy, internet portals and radio stations and also Polish Television. He is a laureate of the creative scholarship of the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the "Literature" category and the 2021 Golden and Silver BohaterON Awards in the "Journalist" category for the implementation of the multi-level reportage project "Erased Border. In the footsteps of the Second Republic", broadcast on Polish Television.