Kijak studied with the film scholar and
John Cassavetes expert
Ray Carney, as well as the late Mel Howard at
Boston University's College of Communication. He wrote, directed and produced his debut feature film
Never Met Picasso (1996) which starred
Margot Kidder,
Alexis Arquette and
Don McKellar (with music by
Kristin Hersh). It won awards for both Best Screenplay and Best Actor (for Arquette) at the 1997
Outfest film festival. He went on to make the documentary
Cinemania (2002), a look at New York City’s manic-obsessive film buffs in collaboration with German film director
Angela Christlieb. The film was shown at over 25 film festivals worldwide including
Locarno International Film Festival,
International Film Festival Rotterdam,
Edinburgh International Film Festival,
SXSW,
Tribeca Film Festival,
Melbourne International Film Festival,
Seattle International Film Festival,
Sheffield Documentary Festival, and the
Hamptons International Film Festival where it won the Golden Starfish Jury Award for Best Documentary.
Cinemania grew out of a short film Kijak made called
Movie Madness: The Passion of Jack Angstreich for
John Pierson's show
Split Screen that ran on
IFC. His next film was a documentary on musician
Scott Walker. The film, titled
Scott Walker - 30 Century Man was executive produced by
David Bowie, and featured
Radiohead,
Brian Eno,
Sting,
Damon Albarn and
Jarvis Cocker, and provided a look inside Scott Walker’s creative process over a 40-year career as Walker was completing work on his first album in a decade,
The Drift. The film had its world premiere on October 31, 2006, at the 50th
London Film Festival, and premiered internationally at the 2007
Berlin International Film Festival and became one of the most critically acclaimed documentaries released in the UK that year.
Stones in Exile, a film he directed that was commissioned by
The Rolling Stones to tell the story of the making of their 1972 album
Exile on Main St., had its world premiere at the 2010
Directors' Fortnight in
Cannes, followed by broadcast premieres on
BBC 1's
Imagine, and on a special edition of
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on
NBC. The film would be the first of five of Kijak's films to be produced by two-time
Academy Award-winning producer
John Battsek for his company
Passion Pictures. In 2012, he teamed with
Passion Pictures again and
Rob Trujillo from
Metallica (making his debut as a film producer) on a feature documentary about the musician
Jaco Pastorius. On February 11, 2013,
The Hollywood Reporter announced that Kijak would be directing a feature documentary about the biggest-selling boy band of all time,
The Backstreet Boys. The film, titled ''
Backstreet Boys: Show 'Em What You're Made Of'' was produced by Mia Bays (who produced Kijak's Scott Walker film) and Pulse Films.
We Are X, a documentary on the heavy metal band
X Japan and its leader
Yoshiki, was premiered in the World Documentary Competition at the
2016 Sundance Film Festival. Kijak remarked about the film "I might have to quit music films after this one. The story is so unreal, I don't know where else I could go after this." The film was awarded the Special Jury Award for Editing. It then went on to play at
SXSW where it won an Audience Award for Excellence in Title Design. It has continued to screen at festivals around the world, including
Seattle International Film Festival, BEAT Festival in Moscow, and the
Shanghai International Film Festival. It was released theatrically in the US by Drafthouse Films, a division of
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and has been released internationally. On March 13, 2018, Kijak's documentary
If I Leave Here Tomorrow: A Film About Lynyrd Skynyrd had its world premiere at the
SXSW Film Festival, prior to its US broadcast debut on
Showtime on August 18, 2018. Another
Showtime documentary followed in 2019:
Sid & Judy, about the life of
Judy Garland, framed by the story of her marriage to her third husband
Sidney Luft. Kijak's next project was acting as showrunner of the 4-part docu-drama series
Equal (2020) for
HBO Max. Produced by
Scout Productions,
Greg Berlanti, and
Jim Parson's That's Wonderful Productions,
Equal tells the stories of the LGBTQ rights movement in the years leading up to the 1969
Stonewall Uprising and the first
Pride marches. He directed three of the series' four episodes, with filmmaker
Kimberly Reed directing one. His return to narrative filmmaking,
Shoplifters of the World, based entirely around the music of
The Smiths, was released in March 2021 by RLJ Entertainment and received its first major public screening at the SeeYouSound Film Festival in Turin, Italy in February 2022 as part of a retrospective dedicated to Kijak's music films. On November 6, 2020
The Hollywood Reporter announced that Kijak's next film would be a documentary about American actor
Rock Hudson. Produced by
Altitude Films and Dogstar Films for
HBO Documentary Films,
Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed premiered at the 2023
Tribeca Film Festival before its broadcast premiere on
HBO. ==Filmography==