Before the Twilight Wins Filmland Polen

The 7th Filmland Polen New Polish Film Festival has come to an end. The Audience Award for the most interesting feature, also known as “Hannoveranen”, went to Before the Twilight by Jacek Bławut.

Filmland Polen is the oldest Polish film festival in Germany. Screenings in four key cities of northern Germany (Bremen, Hannover, Hamburg and Lübeck) take place all year round; their purpose being to promote Polish cinema in Germany.

Every month screenings of feature, documentary, and animated films, and Q&A meets with their creators, serve to pursue the debate about the interpenetration of cultures and promote mutual understanding between Poles and Germans. The festival has gained a steady following not only among Polish expats, but also with the German crowds.

Apart from screenings of the year’s most interesting films, Filmland Polen 2009 brought a number of special events related to Polish history and cinema. The centennial of Polish cinema was an excellent opportunity to screen Polish and German classic movies. Audiences also had a chance to meet with acclaimed Polish filmmakers: Grażyna Szapołowska, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Daniel Olbrychski, Adam Sikora, and Jacek Bławut. Two films about the events of June’89 by Maria Zmarz-Koczanowska were screened to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism. The Second World War was commemorated with screenings of two war films: Westerplatte (1967) by Stanisław Różewicz, and the TV movie Tomorrow We’re Going to the Movies (2006) by Michał Kwieciński. Two documenaries by Krzysztof Magowski entitled Czy bedzie wojna and Świat moich wujków were screened as part of a special programme to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Hannover and Poznań as partner cities. Screenings of feature films were preceded by a retrospective of animated films by acclaimed artist Piotr Dumała.

The Filmland Polen New Polish Film Festival is organized by the Deutsch-Polnisches FilmForum e.V. in Hannover. The honorary patron of the event is Dr. Marek Prawda, Polish Ambassador to Germany.

The festival is a two-time nominee for the Polish Film Institute Awards in the Promotion of Polish Films Abroad category.

Further details are available at www.filmlandpolen.de (Polish and German only)

Translated by Karolina Kołtun