Frequent screenwriter for Andrzej Wajda whose own films as a director have focused on the lives of the marginal and the doomed. Holland studied filmmaking in Czechoslovakia under Milos Forman and Ivan Passer, returning to Poland in 1972 after police harassment had culminated in a jail sentence. She made her co-directing debut in 1977 with "Screen Tests" and wrote her first screenplay for Wajda, "Without Anaesthesia", in 1978. Two years later her solo feature directing debut, "Provincial Actors", won the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes. After the imposition of martial law in 1981 Holland emigrated to Paris, where she still lives.

Holland's last Polish feature, "A Woman Alone" (1981), chronicles the grim plight of an unmarried mother employed as a letter-carrier. The 1985 West German film "Bitter Harvest", Holland's real breakthrough on the international film scene, reverted to a wartime theme, detailing the relations between a mildly prosperous farmer and the Jewish refugee woman he discovers and shelters. Although her English-language debut film, "To Kill a Priest" (1988) was considered a career setback, Holland rebounded magnificently with the powerful, acclaimed study of a Jew who masquerades as a Nazi at the height of the Holocaust, "Europa, Europa" (1991). She followed up with another well-received art house item, "Olivier Olivier" (1992), an intriguing story of a child who claims to be a boy who disappeared six years earlier. Holland again explored the world of youth with her first mainstream Hollywood film, an adaptation of the children's classic "The Secret Garden" (1993). Holland followed with another period drama, "Washington Square" (1997) based on the Henry James novel. Formerly married to Czech director Laco Adamik, with whom she has a daughter.