A version of this story about Lukasz Zal appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s Oscar magazine.
Pinned to the wall behind “Cold War” director of photography Lukasz Zal’s desk is a poster with a quote from Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle: “My best film is my next film.”
Zal is one of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Cinematography and one of three nominated for foreign language films, which ties an Oscar record. For the first 38 years of the Academy Awards, foreign-language films were ignored in the Best Cinematography category. But in recent years, foreign fare has averaged almost one nomination a year.