Rafael Kapelinski is a fiction film director, a script consultant and a film educator working internationally. His work is characterised by an interest in intimate human stories set against wider political and historical contexts, often blending humour with emotional intensity.
His feature film BUTTERFLY KISSES starring Theo Stevenson, Rosie Day and Thomas Turgoose premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2017, where it won the Crystal Bear in the Generation 14 section. Subsequently, the film won a myriad of other major international awards, and was longlisted for the British Independent Film Award for Best Director.
Other feature directing and screenwriting credits include CRANLEY GARDENS (vel A WOMAN AT NIGHT), which won Grand Prix at the Diorama International FilmFestival (New Delhi, India) and BUDAPEST DIARIES, which he developed as part of the Les Premiers Plans development programme under the tutelage of Jeanne Moreau.
His short film directing credits include the multi-award winning EMILY CRIES, THE INFORMER and THE FOUNDATION. The extended version of the latter THE BALLAD OF PIOTROWSKI premiered at the New Horizons Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, where it won Special Mention in the New Polish Film Competition. In 2009 Screen International placed Rafael among the Ten Eastern European Directors to Watch.
London-based since 2000, Rafael trained in film directing and screenwriting at the National Film and Television School (Beaconsfield, UK), The London Film School (London, UK), The Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing (Warsaw, Poland), The University of Washington (Seattle, USA), and Nicholas Copernicus University (Torun, Poland).
He has also participated in multiple script development programmes such as Les Premiers Plans (Angers, France) and EKRAN (Warsaw, Poland). In 2009 he was selected in the 19th session of the Cinefondation (La Cinef) Residence of the Cannes Film Festival with a project UP ON THE ROOF.
Rafael is also a film educator. Employing his proprietary Story Spectrum story development framework, he has trained over a thousand filmmaking students from around the world. His students’ work has successfully featured at the most prestigious film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Sundance and Venice. His practical script development handbook The Story Spectrum: Poets and Engineers is pending publication.
As the current Head of Directing at the London Film School (London, UK), he continues to lecture in film directing, fiction development and audiovisual storytelling. He has also lectured at the Central Film School (London, UK), the London Film Academy (London, UK), Krzysztof Kieslowski Film School (Katowice, Poland), and the American Film Institute (Los Angeles, USA).
Rafael is the founder of The Story Spectrum, an online script and storytelling consultancy, which provides script advice to film funds and other filmmaking institutions. He was a script supervisor on Nina Gantz’s BAFTA-winning animation EDMOND.
He has contributed articles on filmmaking to Screen International and published his fiction work in Nowy Czas magazine in London. He has also collaborated with Channel One of Polish State Radio on two very successful radio plays, A LUCKY GUY and THREE CHANCES.