Rafał Syska (born July 18, 1974 in Kielce) is a Polish film historian and associate professor in the Audiovisual Arts Department of Jagiellonian University in Cracow. First he was specialized in the phenomenon of violence in cinema (Ph-D thesis Film and Violence. Ways of Film Violence Representation), then he focused on strategies of authorship in American cinema (post Ph-D., habilitation dissertation Keep the Distance. Film World of Robert Altman). At present he is an expert of the contemporary minimalistic slow-cinema, especially its neomodernism tendencies (e.g. works of Theo Angelopoulos, Alexander Sokurov, Béla Tarr, Bruno Dumont, Sarunas Bartas, Fred Kelemen, Tsai Ming-liang, Lisandro Alonso, Carlos Reygadas.