Polish films at 31st IDFA





Polish titles in the 31st IDFA program

Paweł Ziemilski’s “In Touch” and Polish-Belarusian co-production “Summa” directed by Andrea Kutsil were invited to the competition for medium-length documentaries. The documentary film “Connected” by Aleksandra Maciejczyk will compete in the student competition, and “I Dance for You” by Katarzyna Lesisz will take part in the Kids & Docs competition.

For the short film competition, the selection committee invited the film “Unconditional love” by Rafał Łysak. The world premiere of the film took place at the 58th Krakow Film Festival, where the film won the Golden Hobby-Horse (Zloty Lajkonik) award.

The special program “Me” will show the documents “Father and son” by Paweł Łoziński and “Father and son on the go” by Marcel Łoziński. The “Me” program focuses on personal and autobiographical documentary films.

This year, the honorary guest of the IDFA festival will be Helena Třeštíková, who chose ten important and inspiring documentary films of other artists. Helena Třeštíková’s list included “First Love” by  Krzysztof Kieślowski.

The Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival IDFA is one of the most important documentary festivals in the world. Every year, it attracts over 250,000 viewers, including over 3,000 guests from the documentary industry, and films screened at IDFA often become festival favorites. This year IDFA will be held on November 14-25 and it will be the 31st edition of the festival.

Polish films at the IDFA festival

Polish documentary productions are present at the IDFA festival from the first edition, and in recent years  received several important awards and distinctions at the festival. In 1998, the award for the best full-length documentary film went to Dariusz Jablonski for the film “Fotoamator”. In 2009, the film “Six Weeks” by Marcin Janos Krawczyk won the main prize in the Short Documentary Competition. A year later, the nomination for the award in the students’ films category  was given to “Showing at the Tatry cinema” by Igor Chojna. In 2012, as many as two Polish films were nominated for IDFA awards – “Bad Boy – a dangerous cell” by Janusz Mrozowski in the Feature Competition and Paweł Ziemilski’s “Rogalik” in the short-length section. In 2013, in the section of student documents, the nomination received “Our Curse” by Tomasz Śliwiński, and a year later the Special Jury Award went to Hanna Polak for the film “The Better Times Will Come”. In 2015, the festival was won by the film “Don Juan”, a Swedish production directed by Jerzy Śladkowski with pictures by Wojciech Staroń. In 2016, the film directed by Aniela Gabryel “When this wind stops” received the ARRI IDFA Award for the Best Film in the Student Films Competition, and the “Bond” of Zofia Kowalewska’s – Special Jury Prize. Last year, the Student’s Films  award went to  the film “Call Me Tony” by Lodz Film School student Klaudiusz Chrostowski, and “Żalanasz – empty bank” by Marcin Sauter won an award for the best short film.

The festival is accompanied by the Docs for Sale film fair, existing since 1996, which is visited annually by representatives of the documentary industry. As every year, several Polish documentary films will be available in the market videotape.

Source of information: www.polishdocs.pl

 


22.10.2018