Festival & Award · 2026-07-01
A Legendary Polish Mountaineer's Story from Katowice Radio
Radio Katowice's radio drama "Himalaje," about legendary Polish mountaineer Jerzy Kukuczki, has won three awards at the Dwa Teatry festival in Sopot and will air on Polish Radio's Dwójka channel on 5 July. Kukuczki was the second person in history to climb all fourteen eight-thousander peaks.
Jerzy Kukuczki (1948–1989) was a legendary figure in mountaineering: after Reinhold Messner, he was the second person to climb all fourteen of Earth's peaks over 8,000 metres, often by new routes or in winter — making him a symbol of Poland's golden age of mountaineering. He died in 1989 on the south face of Lhotse.
The radio drama is based on a biography of Kukuczki by Dariusz Kortko and Marcin Pietraszewski, which the Silesian Theatre (Teatr Śląski) staged under director Robert Talarczyk with co-writer Artur Pałyga. Radio Katowice, the Silesian regional station of Polish public radio, adapted this stage production for radio.
The piece won three awards at this year's 25th edition of Dwa Teatry — Poland's leading radio and television theatre festival, held in Sopot: the audience award for best radio drama, a special award for the production team, and a music award for composer Mioush. The radio drama airs on Sunday, 5 July, at 4pm on Polish Radio's Dwójka channel.
The station behind the radio drama, Radio Katowice, is one of Polish Radio's regional studios — but after its award haul, the national culture channel is broadcasting it. It's worth noting that regional public radio studios operate in almost every major European country except Hungary: there, the government of Viktor Orbán shut down the regional studios in 2012. Regional studios have often produced radio drama — in Hungary, for instance, Pécs Radio ran a radio-drama workshop in the 1960s; in Romania, regional stations make radio drama in both minority and majority languages; and in Austria, the regional studios and the Vienna studio long produced radio drama equally. Regional radio-drama production typically builds on the theatre and ensemble based in the region's centre, as is the case with the Katowice production too. This way, provincial theatres also join the bloodstream of radio production and reach a national audience through national broadcast.
Cast & Crew
- Biography author Dariusz Kortko
- Biography author Marcin Pietraszewski
- Director Robert Talarczyk
- Co-writer Artur Pałyga
- Music Mioush
Sources: Polskie Radio · Radio Katowice · Mérték Médiaelemző Műhely
This article was partly machine-composed.