Agnieszka Holland's Pokot (Spoor) Premieres In Main Competition At 67th Berlinale
Agnieszka Holland’s latest feature Pokot (Spoor) will have its world premiere at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, screening in Main Competition. The film was co-financed by the Polish Film Institute.
New Film by Agnieszka Holland Screening in Berlinale’s Main Competition
Pokot (Spoor), directed by Agnieszka Holland, will screen in Main Competition at the 67th Berlin IFF alongside new films by such acclaimed directors as Călin Peter Netzer, Aki Kaurismäki, Sebastián Lelio, Teresa Villaverde, and Andres Veiel.
The Main Competition jury at the upcoming edition of Berlinale will be chaired by Dutch director-screenwriter Paul Verhoeven.
Further details about the first films revealed in Berlinale’s Main Competition lineup are available at www.berlinale.de.
Pokot (Spoor)
Pokot (Spoor). Photo by Robert Pałka
The main character in Agnieszka Holland’s latest film is Janina Duszejko, a retired engineer living in the Sudeten mountains. She’s also a vegetarian and an astrologist. One snowy winter night, she stumbles on the dead body of her neighbour. The man, a poacher, died a mysterious death. The only visible tracks around his house are roe deer hooves.
Seeing the ineptitude of the police, Duszejko begins an unorthodox investigation of her own. “Our film could easily have a different title: No Country for Old Women,” says director Agnieszka Holland. “The world we live in, and certainly Poland, where the film is set, is precisely such a country. This story is firmly set in the reality of contemporary rural Poland, 25 years after the fall of communism. The film is a mix of genres: a psychological drama about humiliated people and animals; an environmental film; a pastiche and gripping crime story, and a feminist vivisection of the situation of an elderly woman fighting for her values in contemporary Polish society. The main protagonist is honest, passionate, generous, wise, but also mad. Rebellious and filled with indignation. She will take us on a journey through a land where breathtaking nature blends with mud, corruption, cruelty, stupidity, and blood.”
The Crew
Agnieszka Holland on the set of Pokot (Spoor). Photo by Robert Pałka
The script was written by Agnieszka Holland and Olga Tokarczuk, based on Olga Tokarczuk’s bestselling novel “Drive Your Plough over the Bones of the Dead”, published in 2009. The film was lensed by Jolanta Dylewska and scored by Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz. Filming took place in a variety of locations, including Międzygórze, Bystrzyce, Nowa Ruda, and Berlin.
The film features performances by Agnieszka Mandat, Wiktor Zborowski, Jakub Gierszał, Borys Szyc, Andrzej Grabowski, Tomasz Kot, Katarzyna Herman, Patricia Volny, Miroslav Krobot, Marcin Bosak, and Andrzej Konopka.
International Co-Production Supported by the Polish Film Institute
Pokot (Spoor) was made as a co-production between Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Sweden. The film’s producer is Studio Filmowe TOR, supported by funds from the European Union’s Media programme, and the Polish-German Co-Development Fund for developing feature film projects. The film’s co-producers include Heimatfilm (Germany), Nutprodukce (Czech Republic), Nutprodukcia (Slovakia), and Chimney (Sweden). Polish co-producers include Odra-Film, the National Audiovisual Institute, HBO, and Agora. The film was co-financed by the Polish Film Institute and received financing from Eurimages.
Polish Theatrical Release on February 24, 2017
Agnieszka Holland’s Pokot (Spoor) will be released theatrically in Poland on February 24, 2017. Distribution is handled by Next Film.
Polish Films in Berlinale’s Main Competition
Last year’s Berlinale Main Competition lineup featured Zjednoczone Stany Miłości (United States of Love) by Tomasz Wasilewski, winning the Silver Bear Award for Best Screenplay. At earlier editions of the festival, two films by Małgorzata Szumowska also screened in Main Competition: W imię… (In the Name Of…) in 2013, winning the Teddy Award and Body/Ciało (Body) in 2015, winning the Silver Bear Award for Best Director. The 2015 Main Competition lineup also screened Pod elektrycznymi chmurami (Under the Electric Clouds), a Russian-Ukrainian-Polish co-production directed by Alexey German Jr. The film received the Silver Bear Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution for camerawork by Evgeniy Privin and Sergey Mikhalchuk.
In 2011, the Main Competition lineup featured El Premio (The Prize), a Mexican-French-German-Polish co-production directed by Paula Markovitch. The film received two Silver Bear Awards: for Best Cinematography (Wojciech Staroń) and Best Production Design (Barbara Enriquez).
67th Berlin IFF
The 67th Berlin International Film Festival will run from February 9 through February 19, 2017.
The festival’s official website is available at www.berlinale.de.
Based on a press release by the distributor