Polish Documentaries at Hot Docs
Over 170 documentary from around the world, a film market, a pitching forum, along with series of workshops, international conferences and discussion panels – this is the outline of the upcoming Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival in Canada. The event is to be held in late April and early May 2011. Several Polish documentaries made it into the festival’s lineup.
As previous years have shown, Canadian audiences are very keen on Polish documentary films. Last year’s Hot Docs lineup featured four Polish films: Chemia (Chemo) by Paweł Łoziński, Sześć tygodni (Six Weeks) by Marcin Janos Krawczyk (both in International Competition), as well as Gry wojenne (War Games) by Dariusz Jabłoński and Przyszedł człowiek i wziął (A Man Came and Took Her) by Jędrzej Niestrój and Rafał Przybył. The festival’s Doc Shop film market featured another 22 Polish titles. Polish documentary cinema also celebrated success in Toronto – in 2009, Bartek Konopka’s Królik po berlińsku (Rabbit a la Berlin) was one of the festival’s top titles, wining the award for best medium-length documentary.
This year’s Hot Docs event (running from April 28 through May 8) will again feature several projects by Polish documentary filmmakers. Screening in competition: Poza zasięgiem (Out of Reach) by Jakub Stożek, awarded at this year’s Sundance festival; the documentary tale Koniec Rosji (At the Edge of Russia) by Michał Marczak, awarded at the Flahertiana festival in Perm and at the East Silver Market; Phnom Penh Lullaby by Paweł Kloc, a film that will have its world premiere at Visions du Réel in Nyon; and finally Takie życie… (That’s Life), the documentary debut from Daniel Zieliński (a student at the National Film School in Łódź) that previously screened at the One World festival in Prague. The Special Presentations section of Hot Docs will feature Vodka Factory by Jerzy Śladkowski, a Polish-Swedish co-production awarded in Leipzig and Prague.
Much like last year, film professionals from around the world gathered at the Doc Shop film market will have an opportunity to watch a number of Polish documentary films, presented within the Polish Docs initiative of the Krakow Film Foundation with support from the Polish Film Institute.
Hot Docs is North America’s largest documentary film festival and holds an important place in the world of documentary filmmaking. For the past seventeen years, Hot Docs has annually presented an excellent opportunity for meetings with filmmakers, producers, distributors and documentary film experts. Hot Docs is more than just a festival for documentary films from around the globe. As part of its wide initiative of developing the film industry, the Hot Doc team organizes the Doc Shop film market in the form of a digital film archive with over 1,500 film titles, as well as a pitching forum, and series of conferences, discussion panels and workshops.
The Hot Docs festival’s Sales Office serves as a sort of industry hub, being the meeting point for documentary film rights holders and buyers. The Sales Office is also a key source of information, both for buyers and the filmmakers themselves, regarding festival guests, the film market, and all industry events, including:
International Co-Production Day – a day dedicated to meetings of producers interested in the Doc Summit international programme;
Rendezvous – a framework for organizing individual pitching sessions with distributors, producers, and broadcasters;
Doc Summit – a panel for open debate about the development of the film industry.
Further details available at www.hotdocs.ca.
Press release
Translated by Karolina Kołtun