In the period following the collapse of communism, when government sources for funding native film production throughout Eastern Europe shrank to very low levels, filmmakers throughout the region turned to international coproductions as the most viable option for securing their craft's continued existence. In Poland some of the most established and promising film directors, such as Andrzej Wajda, Agnieszka Holland, and Krzysztof Kieślowski, found their producers in Western Europe. In the case of the latter two, the conditions of foreign coproductions impacted their works so significantly that the collaborations may be said to have amounted to fundamental turning points in their respective careers. At the same time, Russian film directors were increasingly relying on Western, primarily French, production companies for the funding of their projects. The political and, more importantly, cultural connections that had existed between Poland and the Soviet Union prior to 1989 ceased to provide any sort of link between the two national cinemas in the postcommunist era. On the level of representation, stereotypical portrayals of Russians in Polish cinema, and vice versa, that harked back to the pre– World War II period started to gradually dominate Polish and Russian screens. Since the collapse of communism in Poland, Polish film directors have been successfully casting Russian actors at a rate that may actually have exceeded their presence in Polish films of the communist era. But only one film, Krzysztof Zanussi's Persona Non Grata (2005), has presented an example of a Polish-Russian coproduction that went beyond casting and approximated the type of collaboration that occasionally brought Polish and Soviet filmmakers together in the previous era.