POLISH FILM MAGAZINE 1(4)|2017
Agnieszka Holland on the hunt Financial incentives soon in Poland Polish prince, deliquents and beauty queens at Berlinale
EDITORIAL
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The year 2016 was a particularly successful one for Polish cinema, with our filmmakers winning some significant awards. Tomasz Wasilewski received the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay for United States of Love at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival, Radosław Ochnio received the European Sound Designer award for his work on Jerzy Skolimowski’s 11 Minutes at the European Film Awards, and Małgorzata Szumowska received the People’s Choice Award for her film Body. The Polish city of Wrocław had the honor of hosting the 29th European Film Awards ceremony on December 10, 2016. A great number of Polish films were shown in movie theatres around the world in 2016. This was largely due to the efforts of Polish producers, who have been increasingly involved in co-productions with international partners. As a result, their films can be better promoted internationally and have greater distribution potential. In addition, ticket sales for domestic titles in Poland recorded levels not seen for many years, with a total of 13 million admissions. Polish films easily held their own against Hollywood blockbusters and accounted for a respectable 25% share of the national cinema market. This success was not only driven by commercial titles, but also challenging, auteur cinema like Wojciech Smarzowski’s Hatred, which turned out to be a surprise box-office hit, with over 1.4 million admissions. 2017 is the second year of a special envelope for minority co-productions at the Polish Film Institute. I heartily encourage you to work with Polish producers on inspiring projects, and have absolutely no doubt that Polish filmmakers will surprise you again this year.
Poland goes international again at this year’s Berlinale. Our Main Competition entry, Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor, is a multilateral co-production between Poland, Germany, Sweden, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Holland talks to “Polish Film Magazine” on page 8. You can read about the other films representing Poland on the following pages. We hope that our film industry becomes even more international once the new financial incentive system is introduced in 2017. The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage has initiated a draft bill that promises to offer a 25% cash rebate for productions shot in Poland. More information can be found on page 6. Film Commission Poland witnessed a great deal interest in our country as a shooting destination on the part of international film companies in 2016. Crews from the USA, Germany, the UK, France, Belgium and South Korea all worked successfully in Poland and profited from the extraordinary variety of locations here. They shot footage from the shores of the Baltic, and the forests of the Owl Mountains, to the secluded villages of the Podkarpacie region, and the historic tenement houses of Southern Poland. You can see some of these lost worlds for yourself on page 32. We are proud to say that the number of regional film commissions and funds in Poland continues to grow. The two institutions recently established in the regions Podkarpackie and Masuria will enable Poland to make even more unique locations available, and offer more support to domestic and international crews. In 2017 we are ready for more.
©© MARCIN KUŁAKOWSKI / PISF, FILM COMMISSION POLAND; COVER: © FILIP MILLER/FOTONOVA
Magdalena Sroka General Director of the Polish Film Institute
CONTENTS Editorial 1 Production news 2 Jarosław Sellin 6 BERLINALE 2017 Spoor 8 Heart of Love, Hostages 12 Animals, The Trial: The State of Russia vs. Oleg Sentsov 13 The Erlprince 14 Miss Holocaust, Rudzienko, Butterfly Kisses 15 Shooting Star 16 2 of 10 Europeans to watch 17
TALENTS Agnieszka Dziedzic 18 Denial 20 Jolanta Dylewska 22 Casperade 24 Krakow Film Cluster 26 MONEY BANK Get financed in Poland 28 Box office 30 Key Polish Film Festivals 31
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LOCATE&SHOOT Sideways of Poland 32 REMAINS OF THE DAY Kids Aren’t All Right 38 Polish Story: Coming to America 40
Tomasz Dąbrowski Head of Film Commission Poland
Publisher: Film Commission Poland (Tomasz Dąbrowski, Anna E. Dziedzic, Dana Pohl). Contact details: ul. Chełmska 21 bud. 4, 00-724 Warsaw, Poland. email: office@filmcommissionpoland.pl Editor in chief: Ola Salwa. Writers: Anna Bielak, Carmen Gray, Darek Kuźma, Michał Oleszczyk, Sebastian Smoliński, Michael Pattinson, Artur Zaborski. Graphic Designer: Anna Myśluk. Layout Designer: Marcin Kiedio. Photo Editor: Marcin Kapica. English Editor: Steve Canty. Special thanks: Robert Baliński, Marzena Cieślik, Olga Domżała, Rafał Jankowski of Polish Film Institute, Irena Strzałkowska (Tor Film Studio). This magazine is supported by the Polish Film Institute and regional film commissions.
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NEWS
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Hagar Ben-Asher is one of the most intriguing voices in contemporary cinema
Multinational Harvesters
Hagar Ben-Asher working on Polish-German-Israeli film The Israeli writer-director is currently working on a period drama, The World Has Ended. The film is set in 1945, and revolves around Lili, a 13-year-old girl who has barely managed to survive the war. Lili meets Joseph, a marionette puppeteer who rescues her from certain death, and convinces him to teach her
the art of puppeteering. Hagar Ben-Asher’s first film, The Slut premiered at La Semaine de la Critique in Cannes, before travelling to many festivals around the globe. Her second film, The Burglar, was presented at the Main Competition in Rotterdam. The World Has Ended is due to go into production in the first half of 2018. Sev-
enty percent of the shooting will be done in Poland. Film Commission Poland is helping with the location scouting, and the film’s Polish producers are Klaudia Śmieja and Beata Rzeźniczek (Mandats). The film is also produced by Pola Pandora (Germany) and Transfax (Israel). World sales: The Match Factory.
The films directed by Etienne Kallos and follows the emotional and spiritual journey of an Afrikaner teenager. His parents, who are fundamentalist Christians, adopt a boy who lives in the big city. The mysterious and mischievous orphan moves to a remote farm with his new “family”. The Harvesters was produced by Sophie Erbs through Cinema Defacto (France), and co-produced by Mariusz Włodarski from Lava Films (Poland), Giorgios Karnavas and Konstantinos Kontrovarkis from Heretic (Greece), and Michael Auret and Thembisa Cochrane from Spier Films (South Africa). Shooting is scheduled to start in June 2017, with Polish cinematographer Michał Englert (Congress, Marie Curie) on board. The film will be edited by Agnieszka Glińska (The Here After, 11 Minutes).
Klara Kochańska, who won a Student Oscar in 2106 for her short, The Tenants, is working on her feature debut Via Carpatia. The protagonists are a thirty-something couple, who take their car and make for a refugee camp on the Macedonian-Greek border. Kochańska co-directed the film with Kasper Bajon, and the cinematographers are Zuza Kernbach and Julian Kernbach. The small cast includes
Julia Kijowska (Tomasz Wasilewski’s United States of Love) and Piotr Borowski. The film was produced by Agnieszka Kurzydło, through her company MD4 (Marcin Koszałka’s The Red Spider, Katarzyna Rosłaniec’s Baby Blues) in cooperation with Fog’n’ Desire Film (Czech Republic) and Sektor Film (Macedonia). The world sales are available. Julia (Julia Kijowska) carefully observes the world around her as she heads towards Southern Europe
©© PRIVATE ARCHIVE, © ZUZA KERNBACH
Oscar winner takes new film on the road
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NEWS
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admissions in Polish cinemas in 2016. More on p. 30
Claire Denis’ High Life, with Robert Pattinson and Patricia Arquette, to be shot in Poland
Jessica Chastain is the Zookeeper’s Wife. The film stars Polish actress Magdalena Lamparska Chastain plays Antonina Żabińska in this upcoming British-American war drama. The film was based on the book The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman, and follows the real-life story of Jan and Antonina Żabiński, who worked as zookeepers in Warsaw. During II World War, they not only rescued animals, but also people, whom they hid in animal cages.
The film was shot on location in September 2015. Polish star Magdalena Lamparska (Listy do M. 2) plays the supporting role of Wanda Englert. The film also stars Daniel Brühl and Johan Heldenbergh. The script was written by Angela Workman, and the film was directed by Niki Caro (The Whale Rider, North Country). The film is scheduled for release on March 31.
High Life is going to be the acclaimed French filmmaker’s English-language debut. The film is a sci-fi thriller about convicts who have their sentences reduced in return for boarding an intergalactic ship and flying on a dangerous mission to a black hole. The spaceship was designed by the renowned visual artist Olafur Eliasson. Andrew Lauren and D.J. Gugenheim are producing the film through their company Andrew Lauren Productions, in conjunction with Laurence Clerc & Olivier Thery-Lapiney from Alcatraz Films, Claudia Steffen & Christoph Friedel from Pandora Film Production, and Oliver Dungey from
Apocalypse Films. The Polish co-producers are Klaudia Śmieja and Beata Rzeźniczek (Madants), in association with Anna Różalska (Match & Spark). The film is now fully financed and supported by Arte France Cinema and CNC (France), Film and Medienstiftung NRW, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Filmförderungsanstalt, Arte/WDR, and DFFF (Germany). It is being developed with the British Film Institute and Altaris in the UK, and financed by the Polish Film Institute in Poland. Shooting is planned for Germany and Poland in the spring of 2017. Wild Bunch is handling the international sales.
IN DECEMBER 2016 all seven Polish film commissions (Krakow Film Commission, Łódź Film Commission, Mazovia Warsaw Film Commission, Poznan Film Commission, Podkarpackie Film Commission, Silesia Film Commission and Wroclaw Film Commission) led by Film Commission Poland checked in at FOCUS market in London.
Ita Zbroniec-Zajt received top honors from the Swedish Film Academy for her work on Yarden (dir. by Måns Månsson). Interestingly, Zbroniec-Zajt received two of the three nominations in the Best Cinematography category (the other being for My Aunt in Sarajevo, dir. Goran Kapetanovic). Zbroniec-Zajt’s first feature film, Little Crushes, was produced by Agnieszka Dziedzic. You can read about Dziedzic on page 18.
©© UIP, © KATARZYNA SZWARC/ SHN, © MAZOVIA WARSAW FILM COMMISSION POLAND
Polish DoP wins Guldbagge Award
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BOOSTING FILM INDUSTRY Poland intends to offer one of best financial incentive systems in Europe, says Jarosław Sellin* by Ola Salwa
*Jarosław Sellin is a Secretary of State at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
2017 starts with some good news for the Polish film industry. Indeed. Thanks to the initiative of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, our country finally has a chance to join other European countries in offering financial incentives to film producers. Supporting the creative sector is an important component of our government’s policy. Apart from video games, we are well aware that the global audiovisual sector is growing rapidly, and is an important factor in the country’s economic development. The Polish film industry has an excellent international reputation. The only thing lacking has been financial incentives. Unfortunately, this has made Poland unable to compete with neighboring countries for interesting international film projects.
NEWS
When can we expect these incentives to be available? The draft of the incentive law was recently sent to other ministries and the film industry for consultation. We are working very hard to have them introduced as soon as possible. I’m sure the system we intend to offer will be one of the best in Europe. Why is that? The final shape of the bill is still being worked out, but I can assure you that it will result in a transparent and efficient cash rebate system with a 25% refund of qualifying Polish expenditure. The planned annual budget of the rebate will be approximately 22 mln EUR. We are going to introduce a quick and simple economic instrument. There will be no selection committees, no set deadlines for applications, and financial support will be granted on a “first come, first served” basis. What will the application process look like? There will be a new competent authority, the Polish Audiovisual Fund, set up to manage the incentives. It will also promote the Polish film industry and our amazing shooting locations. Production companies that are registered and liable for corporate tax in Poland will be eligible to apply. After an initial qualifying test, an agreement between the PAF and applicant will be signed within a month. Once the production is completed, the applicant should submit a financial report that will be audited within a month. The payment itself will follow within two weeks. As you can see this system is quick and simple.
©© COURTESY OF MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND NATIONAL HERITAGE
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Any other conditions for applying? The criteria will be the same of those that apply in other European countries. The qualification test I mentioned will verify the level of creative and technical involvement as well as the use of Polish locations. Obviously, there will be minimal amounts of qualifying Polish production expenditure per project. Apart from that, extra points will be given for including themes related to Polish culture and/or history. Is this financial system only going to support big-budget productions? Not at all. Feature films (live action or animated), documentary films, and high-end television dramas will all be eligible for support. The system will be available for local productions, co-productions, and foreign service productions. As for big-budget films, we may consider raising the caps, depending on how much money is spent in Poland. Will this new economic instrument make Poland more competitive than the Czech Republic, Germany or Hungary? I believe it will. The scheme should definitely strengthen our producers internationally. We have already been a very attractive partner for foreign productions. The ADVERTISMENT
financial incentive system is simply the cherry on top. Poland has a lot to offer experienced English-speaking crews, excellent film service, and state-of-the art post-production outlets. Our film industry has been working hard for years to earn this reputation. I needn’t add that our service prices are still lower than those of Western European countries. Professionalism, credibility and security are our three main guiding principles. We are going to introduce a quick and simple economic instrument
If you could have one wish, what film you would like to see made in Poland? Good question. Poland has many untold stories that deserve to be made into films, and it is important to us that they become international. If I had to pick just one, I’d like to see a film about St. Adalbert of Prague, who lived in the 10th century. This film would feature historical figures like Pope Sylvester, The Emperor Otto II, and the first Polish king, Boleslaw I the Brave. It would be a wonderful epic about the “christianitas” of medieval Europe and a natural co-production with the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Italy. I’m sure our film producers would be up to the challenge. They are definitely ready to take on more than they have.
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BERLINALE 2017
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FAR FROM HEAVEN Agnieszka Holland’s Spoor is running for the Berlinale’s Golden Bear. This seemingly whimsical genre film has deeper themes lurking beneath the surface - abuse of power, discrimination against women, and the origins of hate
Agnieszka Holland (above) checks every little detail on set
Carmen Gray
The film is based on Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead. What drew you to this book? I’ve been following Olga’s writing virtually since she started. She is definitely a writer with a very distinctive and powerful voice. I’d never thought of adapting her novels to the cinema until I read this one. That’s because it has genre elements. It’s a kind of detective story or thriller with some simple action, even if it’s still quite capricious. Friends of mine from Berlin approached me and asked me whether I’d be interested in directing it, because Olga was trying to get it optioned. So I contacted her. When we sat down together, I thought the script would be fairly easy to write. But after 17 drafts, we realized it was not all that simple. In fact, it was a constant work in progress. The process of writing, re-writing and re-editing continued right up to the last minute, because I wanted to make it a properly told story without losing all the side strands, different layers, and capricious mystery. It’s a philosophical film, and its vision is quite leftist and green. Do you consider it especially important to explore these values onscreen today? I think it’s coming back, you know - the feeling of pow-
©© ROBERT PAŁKA/NEXT FILM (2)
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erlessness, and the feeling that people are not acting justly towards the planet, themselves, or animals, or according to values that have expanded rights. There is now a sort of counter-revolution underway. Brute force is taking over. Suddenly, the film became more political than I’d imagined it would be when we started. It’s something of a cry of outrage, but at the same time, I see the desperation of my own generation, whose first experience was ’68, as well. At the time, we thought that we were all going in the same direction, but we can now see that this was not the case, and we lost our empathy along the way. You still have eccentric examples of people who didn’t, and [the main protagonist] Janina Duszejko is a bit like them.
history. It’s not. Anybody who thought that would be sorely disappointed today. I’m disappointed, but I’m not surprised by what’s going on. You then find yourself faced with the question of whether to take the fatalistic approach and say “that’s just how things are”, to fight knowing that victory is uncertain, or to do something desperate like carrying out an act of terrorism. It’s been interesting to explore this in a movie that is not totally serious, but which is a sort of fairytale, and highly provocative - certainly in Poland. I’m curious, frankly, about how it will be received, as it can be interpreted very differently by different people, generations and countries. I think we were right to play it on a different register than the serious dramas we’ve done previously.
Some of the strongest films of your career have focused on human fortitude in the face of political oppression. This film is playful, but in its own way, it’s also very concerned with power relations and resistance. Is this human struggle eternal, do you think? I am a philosophical pessimist about nature, and I don’t believe that anything is ever resolved once and for all. Things are cyclical, and a certain madness just keeps coming back. As someone who’s made three films about the Holocaust, having devoted something like ten years of my life to that period and familiarized myself with the stories and mechanisms behind this mystery, I cannot believe that it’s all over, that it was the final chapter of the evil inherent in humans, and that it is the end of
Spoor is a portrait of a solitary older woman with a radical mindset, who is not taken seriously by the authorities in the small community in which she lives. It could be considered a very feminist film. Do you see it that way? One of the things that attracted me was that it had such a heroine, as this is not common nowadays. She is disrespected or ignored, and is not seen and certainly not listened to, by most of the people around her, except by outsiders like herself, who are broken and fragile, and often cared for by her in some way. But you don’t need to be a solitary woman in the Polish mountains to be treated like that. Look at Hillary Clinton, and you can see the same approach. The amount of shit and spite
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Agnieszka Mandat (on the left) already starred in Holland’s film, but then her character was cut
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BERLINALE 2017
Duszejko is playing with her own version of the world, which is a little post-modern, a little funky
that has been heaped on that woman! It’s incredible when you compare it with her opponent - who’s not exactly an angel. You always see it with women, especially, but not only, women of a certain age, who are in public positions, and can be hated by people. On the internet, the hate goes global, and her looks or age are often attacked in a very violent manner. You don’t find that with men in similar positions. Even when they’re hated, they’re hated for what they do or say. It’s a feminist film, if you want to look at it that way. My feminism and Olga’s feminism gave birth to Duszejko. But Duszejko is playing with her own vision of the world, which is a little post-modern, a little funky, and a little funny, with all sorts of weird stuff like astrology thrown in. She cannot be a final authority on the scientific approach to the world. And you cannot take anything she does or says completely seriously. The Sudeten Mountains and the striking cinematography work together to create a strong mood. What was it like shooting in a place like that? We tried lots of different things. There was more than one cinematographer – Jolanta Dylewska was the main one, but a lot was shot by my daughter [Kasia Adamik], and a few others. We were trying to find the right style by using different approaches, to create a kind of richness while maintaining a degree of stylistic unity. It was an interesting process. I’ve worked that way before, but not to that extreme. And we spent practically a whole year there, with interruptions of course, over three and a half seasons. So we really experienced the place. And the setting was important right from the outset, because this is where Olga set the novel, and where she lived for many years, writing in her house. So from a certain
standpoint, the novel and the film are very realistic, as they’re inspired by people and places she knew - that actually exist. The beauty of the landscape really hits you, although you can find similar kinds of beauty in other mountainous parts of Poland, but apart from that, you get the feeling that you’re at the end of the world, off the deep end. This stems from the fact that it’s on the German and Czech borders. It was in Germany before the Second World War and had never been completely included in Poland, unlike other areas that had been German before the war. This part of the world is still struggling to find its own identity. There is a feeling of loneliness that is much stronger than in other places. Is it easier or harder to be a rebel, living in a place like that? When you live in a place like that, you can really communicate with yourself. You can’t escape yourself as easily as you can in a big city. I understand this perfectly, because I have a place in the French province of Brittany, where I feel I can really reset and reconnect with myself. I can’t do that so easily in places like Los Angeles, Paris or Warsaw. But I don’t spend as much time there as I’d like - it all depends on my work. The actress who plays Janina is just great. How did you find her? I held a lot of casting sessions and tried out most Polish actresses having the required age. The best was Agnieszka Mandat. I’d given her a part in my first feature film, Provincial Actors, when she’d just come out of grammar school. She had to learn to ride a motorcycle, and after all that the storyline was cut, because the movie was too long, so it was a terrible disappointment for the
©© ROBERT PAŁKA/NEXT FILM
The film was shot on location in south-west of Poland, mostly Kotlina Kłodzka
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SPOOR Director: Agnieszka Holland (in cooperation with Kasia Adamik). Screenplay: Agnieszka Holland, Olga Tokarczuk. Cinematographer: Jolanta Dylewska. Cast: Agnieszka Mandat, Wiktor Zborowski, Jakub Gierszał, Tomasz Kot. Producers: Krzysztof Zanussi, Janusz Wąchała.
young actress. After that, she concentrated on theatre in Kraków. She was really great when I tested her, but I wanted someone who was visibly older and not as sexy. Stanisława Celińska was supposed to play the role for a long time, but pulled out a few weeks before shooting began due to health reasons. So, two years after my first meeting with Agnieszka, I called her up, and fortunately, she was available. I was afraid she’d had a facelift or something in the meantime, but she told me that she loved her wrinkles and had done no such thing. She had aged a bit during those two years, so she was perfect. She really jumped into this role. This was the first time she’d ever played such a big part in a movie, so this might be a new experience for Polish audiences as well. She told me after a few weeks: “You know, you can’t cut me out this time.” And nor can I. She’s in every single scene. There is still an imbalance in the numbers of female and male directors working in the industry. Do you feel that this has changed much over the years, or is it still very much a boy’s club? Well I’ve read the latest report from the States, and it’s actually gone down. There were fewer women last season than in the previous one. So no, it’s not changing, but more people are talking about it more often, so it might change one day. Poland has a lot of interesting and talented women directors among the younger gen-
eration, but there is definitely a glass ceiling. There are more young women admitted to film schools, and their shorts are awarded more often than the men’s, but it’s much more difficult for them to make their first feature film, and it’s extremely difficult for them to make two or more features. So this selection is somehow in place, and it’s strongly supported (obviously) by the producers and the studios. The studios have less faith in films directed by women than by men. And the reviews I find are more harsh. When you read the reviews of female directors, you find far more personal attacks than you do movies analyzed on their merits. It often happens that the film’s message or concept is not well understood, because when a woman tells a story, she mostly tells it from a slightly different, and sometimes very different, viewpoint. And last but not least, I can say that festival selectors disadvantage women’s films. At least Berlin makes a decent fist of including films by women. Obviously, all that matters at the end of the day is whether the film is good or bad, not who directed it, but I think that the world in general is very much in need of more women’s viewpoints - more so than ever before. So if women are being denied their voice in such an important medium, an important part of the story is not being told.
THE IRON LADY Agnieszka Holland, one of Poland’s most successful and influential auteurs, is a woman of many passions. We know her best as a great film director whose international career has been nothing short of stunning. But she has also translated Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being into Polish from Czech, has written numerous screenplays for herself and other directors (e.g. Andrzej Wajda), and has written and produced several TV and stage projects. Holland, a graduate of the famous FAMU film school in Prague, made her first films in the Czech Republic. Her first three Polish features – Provincial Actors (1979), the historical thriller Fever (1980) and A Lonely Woman (completed in 1981, but shelved for several years due to political reasons) made her the most accomplished Polish woman director of the era. Her keen dramatic sense,
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her fierce and intellectually demanding portrayals of the sick communist system, and her sensual approach to sex and violence heralded a strong artistic personality. It was only a matter of time before she would become one of the key figures in European and American cinema. The Holocaust drama Angry Harvest (1985) and To Kill a Priest (1987), based on the martyrdom of Polish Solidarity priest, Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko, were all Western productions starring, inter alia, Christopher Lambert, Ed Harris and Tim Roth. Her dazzling WWII epic Europa Europa (1990), the true story of a Jewish boy trapped between Soviet and Nazi totalitarianisms, won her an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay. The 1990s turned out to be Holland’s American decade. A bitter love letter to Rimbaud and Verlaine (Total Eclipse, 1995), which was made in Europe, was bookended
Sebastian Smoliński by a couple of brilliant literary adaptations (Henry James’s Washington Square, 1997; and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, 1993) and followed by the spiritual drama The Third Miracle (1999). By the end of the millennium, Holland had demonstrated a consummate mastery of every genre and the whole gamut of human sensibilities without ceding the least part of her own voice in the process. Aficionados of her art are now in the privileged position of being able to watch Holland’s superlative work for television (she directed many episodes of The Wire, House of Cards, The Killing, and other shows) and her theatrical films (e.g. the Oscar-nominated In Darkness, 2011) as well. The “Iron Lady” of world cinema is as busy as ever, and, as she proves with Spoor which will premiere in the Main Competition of the Berlinale, more surprising than ever.
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BERLINALE 2017
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ART OF LOVE Łukasz Ronduda’s second feature A Heart of Love - Director’s Cut presented in Forum Expanded section, is a subtle love story and impressive work of contemporary art in cinematic form
The film follows an artistic couple -Wojciech Bąkowski and Zuzanna Bartoszek, based on real-life Polish visual artists. “But it’s not a double biopic,” says Ronduda. “The story is more a portrayal of an extraordinary love between two people, who feel and see more than ordinary people. Apart from that, Wojciech’s career is already established, and he is fifteen years her senior. But whereas his style is already well known and recognizable, she is just starting out, and is still
searching for her own identity through her art,” he adds. One of the main themes of the film is a question whether can you keep being in relationship and in love and maintain your artistic identity intact. The script was written by Robert Bolesto (The Lure, The Last Family), one of Poland’s most unique and distinctive screenwriters. Ronduda hired three editors, who worked on the film independently, and cut three different films. “Przemysław Chruścielewski was the main
HELL OF A WEDDING
Rezo Gigineishvili’s Hostages, presented in the Panorama Special, is precisely sort of “based-on-a-true-story” film guaranteed to arouse the interest of national distributors Darek Kuźma Ana and Nika’s wedding is to be a thrilling experience for everyone attending, especially the bride and groom and their friends, who cannot wait for
the night to get into full swing. What could possibly be more exciting for the young scions of two wealthy Georgian dynasties than to start a happy family of their own? The simple answer is freedom. Hostag-
editor. He watched other versions and then assembled them to create the final cut through picking the best solutions that the editors had to offer,” says director. Ronduda is not a new name on the international film festival circuit. His debut feature The Performer (which he wrote and directed with Maciej Sobieszczański) was presented in Rotterdam and won “Think: The Award” prize at the Forum Expanded section of the 2015 Berlinale. The Performer follows the life of contemporary artist
Oskar Dawicki. The film was both his latest performance and an exploration of cinema and art in general. The Performer was critically acclaimed and proved that cinema could serve as a gateway to the world of contemporary visual art in Poland. This was Ronduda’s original conception – after all, he is an accomplished and popular art curator. A Heart of Love Direcotr’s Cut (Serce miłości), which had its world premiere in Rotterdam, takes this idea even further.
es is set in 1983, and despite the protagonists’ families social status, living in Soviet Georgia was not everything the official state propaganda cracked it up to be. The wedding is merely a cover for hijacking a plane from Tblisi to Batumi, and hopefully from there to neighboring Turkey. The hostages, the terror, the guilt. For them, freedom was worth it. This storyline would be easy to dismiss as too far-fetched were it not for the fact that it actually happened. The event is widely known in Georgia. It took Gigineishvili a couple of years to get this labor of love off the ground. Director and co-writer Lasha Bugadze interviewed eyewitnesses and combed the state archives. The result is something of a cross between a race-against-theclock thriller and a poignant
drama about a lost generation of the Soviet regime. Hostages is a co-production between Georgia, Russia and Poland, with Poland providing the DI package, including the VFX work, color correction and final sound mix, as well as the services of a highly reputable editor, Jarosław Kamiński (Ida, The Lure). Ewa Puszczyńska from Extreme Emotions is coordinating the work on the Polish side. “Collaborating with Georgian and Russian producers was an incredible challenge, not least because of our varied professional experiences and cultural backgrounds,” she says. Hostages is having its international premiere at the Panorama Special section of the Berlinale. There are high hopes for securing distribution deals and getting it onto the festival circuit.
©© DINA OGANOVA, © WOJCIECH SULEŻYCKI/OPUS FILM, PROMO
Artur Zaborski
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FALL ASHEEP Greg Zglinski’s Animals, to be shown in the International Forum of New Cinema, explores the fine line between dreams and reality Artur Zaborski Animals (Tiere) follows the story of Anna and Nick, a married couple who go on vacation abroad. Their journey comes to a sudden halt when their car hits a sheep. This incident triggers a series of strange events. The couple soon start asking themselves whether what is happening to them is real or illusory. “This is a love story told from a subjective perspective,” says Zgliński, whose previous film Wymyk (Courage) won the Best Foreign Feature at the 2012 Rome Independent Film Festival. “I’m going back to what interests me most – cinema that straddles the realms of dreams and reality. Animals was inspired by Maurits Cornelis Escher’s painting ‘Relativity’, which portrays people going upstairs, but never reaching the top, because the staircase keeps turning, and they are actually going round in circles. This symbolizes the relationship between man and woman - when your feelings are so intense that you cannot see where you are, or notice time passing,” he adds. Animals should have been made ten years ago by Austrian screenwriter and director, Jörg Kalt (Crash Test Dummies). Kalt was applying for a subsidy in a Swiss institution that had hired Zglinski to evaluate projects. He received the grant, but before he started filming, he took his own life after years of battling depression. Zgliński could not get the haunting and alluring world that Kalt had created out of his mind. “I didn’t know Jörg personally, but I felt deeply connected to the world he had created.” Zgliński bought the rights to the script and gave it new life after Kalt’s death. “I made some alterations to the original script and I took great care to stick to the original style of the film,” he explains. “I was relieved once I’d learnt that the people who had been closest to Jörg saw his personality in the finished film. For me, this also confirmed that I was the right person to direct his script,” Zgliński concludes.
REBEL WITH A CAUSE A documentary about Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov, who was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for terrorist offences, is to have its world premiere at Berlinale Talents Artur Zaborski
The Trial: The State of Russia VS. Oleg Sentsov was written and directed by Askold Kurov with the support of Andriy Lytvynenko. The protagonist of the film, Sentsov, was arrested by Russia’s Federal Security Service in Russian-occupied Crimea for his pro-Ukrainian sentiments in May 2014. He was tried and promptly convicted to 20 years imprisonment by a Russian court for plotting terrorist acts. Despite the obvious political implications, Kurov steers the viewer in a different direction. He focuses on Sentov and his ordeals in prison. “I’ve been shooting for over a year, ever since Oleg was brought to Lefortovo Remand Prison in Moscow, and the first hearings were held,” explains Kurov, adding: “The case is an unbelievable absurdity. It’s like something out of a Kafka novel. I hope the film draws attention to these terrible events. Unfortunately, however, the chances of a favorable outcome for Sentsov are nil.”
Many filmmakers around the world have expressed their support for, and solidarity with, Sentsov. The festivals in Venice, San Sebastian and Kyiv all made him an honorary jury member. The European Film Academy, and the Polish Film Academy, are vigorously supporting the campaign for Sentsov’s release. Pedro Almodóvar, Agnieszka Holland, Stephen Daldry, Béla Tarr, Wim Wenders, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Aki Kaurismäki, Volker Schlöndorff, Bertrand Tavernier, Andrzej Wajda, and Krzysztof Zanussi have all called for his release. An incredible number of people came forward to support Kurov when he launched a crowdfunding campaign via Indiegogo to raise €12,500 to finance the postproduction. The film is a co-production between Estonia, Poland and the Czech Republic. The world sales are being handled by Rise and Shine.
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THE BOY WONDER
Darek Kuźma
Czekaj might well have found himself compared to Xavier Dolan after his feature debut, Baby Bump (2015), but he is no enfant terrible of Polish cinema. He is, however, a young filmmaker with a distinctive, idiosyncratic voice that has literally made him one of a kind among his peers. The proof is all there in his second directorial outing, The Erlprince, a story about a teenage boy with a brilliant mind and a vivid imagination whose developing identity is constantly being shattered by his overbearing mother. “This is a fundamental period of life. What happens during this time determines who
you become as an adult,” he explains. “From the age of ten to fifteen, we’re more open, we think more audaciously, and we dream bigger. We put on our masks and activate our defense mechanisms later,” adds Czekaj, who had the honor of opening the 41st Gdynia Film Festival with The Erlprince. What makes The Erlprince’s tale of teen angst stand out from the run-of-the-mill coming-of-age film is the inventive form, the interplay of different genres, and the blending of the fictional and real worlds, so that the viewer gladly accepts the invitation to take a journey into the protagonist’s chaotic, naive mind. Czekaj, who also penned the script, structured the film around Johann
Wolfgang Goethe’s famous poem The Erlking to emphasize the protagonist’s inner struggle. Especially after the appearance of his father – a stern man with different fundamental values, who tries to introduce the boy to the natural world. “This let us play with the romantic imagery without having to worry about overdoing it visually,” Czekaj reveals. “We had to devise two distinct, diametrically opposed worlds – the one in which the boy lives, and the one in which he’d like to live,” adds DoP Adam Palenta. “Everything had to have its flipside, its alter ego – two completely different visions seamlessly joined together.” Working on a budget of approx. EUR 600,000, with only 30 days of shooting,
Czekaj and Palenta designed a striking color palette and visual style that emphasizes the boy’s growing confusion with the world. “Goethe’s poem is very dark and gloomy “earthy” is the color that best describes it – and so is the tone of the film,” says Palenta. While they were inspired by other artists, e.g. Caravaggio’s paintings, Czekaj says he assembled a crew of close friends to help embolden him in realizing his own vision. “I don’t believe in realistic cinema. I believe in using metaphor, paraphrase, and allegory to tap into something beneath, something deeper and more meaningful,” he adds.
©© ŁUKASZ BĄK/STUDIO MUNKA-SFP, PROMO (3)
Kuba Czekaj’s sophomore feature, the imaginatively offbeat family drama The Erlprince, is about to wow the audience at the Generation 14plus section of this year’s Berlinale
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GO GIRL Sharon Lockhart’s film Rudzienko is a record of a workshop designed to empower young women Igor Kościelniak
HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL Michalina Musielak gives Holocaust survivors a surprisingly beautiful face in her short documentary debut, Miss Holocaust, which is premiering at the Berlinale
The titular Rudzienko is the village where the Youth Center for Sociotherapy is housed. In 2009, Lockhart met Milena, a young girl who later moved in to the Center. She observed Milena and other teenagers over the next few years. Lockhart, who specializes in long-term projects, designed a workshop aimed at helping young girls find their voice and observed their progress.
She draws a striking portrait that mixes her character’s day-to-day challenges with questions of a more philosophical nature. The film was inspired by Janusz Korczak’s pedagogical work The Child’s Right to Respect. For Lockhart, the Polish language was a crucial aspect of a project that: “proposes an innovative approach to the relationship between image and language by juxtaposing the conversations with their textual translations, and creating a place of quiet reflection.” She has already worked in Poland, having made Podwórka, a film about the courtyards of Łódź, in 2009.
Darek Kuźma Miss Holocaust is a documentary about several elderly women, who survived the Shoah, preparing for a beauty pageant during which they will be able to express their “messages to the world”.“I am really glad to be able to pass on these words through our film,” says Musielak, who co-directed with Irena Siedlar. “We live in Poland, a country in which a community of several million, which had been an essential part of our national identity for centuries, vanished in a few years. We felt that we had to meet the survivors,” she explains. “We felt the need to tell about the emotions surrounding our country’s traumatic history. These still reverberate through society.” Musielak got to know all the women before shooting the film, although she admits that the pageant was a hard sell for some of them. “Judith, for example, called it silly, unreal – a comedy,”she reminisces. “But she did it to leave a legacy.” They all did. As for their individual “messages to the world”, you will have to see Miss Holocaust.
TROUBLE EVERY DAY Polish director Rafał Kapeliński’s impressive black and white Butterfly Kisses is to be screened at the Generation 14plus section of the Berlinale
Igor Kościelniak John Malkovich and Stephen Fry are both fans of the film. Fry has described it as “unforgettable”, and there can be no better word to describe a film that follows a group of teenagers around on Halloween. They roam the corridors
and courtyards of high-rise housing blocks. Little do they know that the next few hours will change their lives forever. Kapeliński has put together an incredible young cast - Theo Stevenson, Byron Lyons and Liam Whiting. This film is a reminder that growing up is the most difficult challenge of all.
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ALWAYS SHINE At only 22, Zofia Wichłacz has already had major roles in the war epic Warsaw 44, and Andrzej Wajda’s final oeuvre, Afterimage. She has been named as one of the European Shooting Stars at the 2017 Berlinale, and stands on the cusp of an international career Anna Bielak “She truly holds her ground. With serene compassion and internal life, Zofia Wichłacz illuminates the screen and remains in our eye long after the lights go out…,” was how the jury described her. Whenever I think of Zofia Wichłacz, I always see a young girl in a blue summer dress. She is surrounded by the dust, rubble and debris that used to be Warsaw. She is terrified, but the fierce look in her eyes makes it clear that she will never give up. Biedronka (“Ladybug”), the character she played in Warsaw 44 (2015), was Wichłacz’s first major role, and her astounding performance won her the Golden Lion for Best Actress at the Gdynia Film Festival. “Zofia possesses incredible sensitivity and an inner strength that constantly pushes her forward,” says Jan Komasa, who directed her in Warsaw 44. “As an actress, she puts everything into her work, has great intuition and a real passion for her craft. She thinks big, never rests on her laurels, and is always hungry for
Poland has a constellation of Shooting Stars...
more,” he adds. “Warsaw 44 needed a female character who could help the film transcend itself. Even though the story is initially focused on another character, it ends with Biedronka. She becomes the symbol of the Warsaw Uprising. That narrative device could only have worked if we had chosen an actress who could command the undivided attention of the audience,” he concludes. Wichłacz was born to a cinematographer father and a scenographer mother. She has been interested in cinema from early childhood and her parents’ work influenced her choice of career. “I had my first acting experience when I was 11 or 12. I played a small part in a film that was shot in our apartment,” she recalls. I don’t think the film was ever distributed, but I really enjoyed working on it, and after it was finished, I told my mom I wanted to study acting,” she adds. Wichłacz soon enrolled the famous acting class that Jan and Halina Machulski ran in Warsaw. The aspiring actress educated herself outside class as well. When asked about her favorite books, Wichłacz names Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, and Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. She explains that the female characters in these books, e.g. Nastassya Filippovna and Blanche DuBois, have something in common. “They are all full-bodied characters, struggling with life. At times they are vulnerable, and at times they are completely lost in their own intrigues and lies,” she says. In the year following Warsaw 44, Wichłacz appeared in the theatrical monodrama Let’s Talk in German. The play is based on the memoir of a 15-year-old girl living in occupied Poland during WWII, who wants to enjoy her life and youth to the fullest. One night, there was a special guest sitting in the audience - the legendary Polish film director, Andrzej Wajda. He immediately cast Wichłacz in his upcoming film Afterimage. She recalls that she had to be fully focused on the set, because even though Wajda gave his actors precise instructions, he liked them to improvise and have ideas of their own. Next film she starred in Kasia Adamik’s thriller Amok showcases Wichłacz versatile talent. Both there and in Afterimage, she plays a supporting role and observes that: “It’s a different kind of work. You have breaks between your shooting days. You have to be able to go home and rest, but at the same time, you can’t lose touch with the storyline or the character,” she says, and adds that this is why it is more difficult to play supporting roles than leads. Asked about the most important thing she’s learnt while working on different film sets, she exclaims: “To never give up!”
Agnieszka Grochowska
Agata Buzek
Mateusz Kościukiewicz
Jakub Gierszał
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©© HUBERT KOMERSKI/AKSON DYSTRYBUCJA, NEXT FILM, SOLOPAN, MACIEJ ENGLERT/KINO ŚWIAT, OLAF TRYZNA (2), RAFAŁ PLACEK
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THE PROFESSIONAL ROMANTIC
King of Polish romantic comedies. The Love Actually-inspired Letters to Santa (Listy do M.) is just as universal and timeless in its laughter, tears and bittersweet message as it is unmistakably local in its
setting and cast of characters. The film drew a cinema audience of over 2.5 million – no mean feat in Poland. Okorn’s next directorial effort, 2016’s Planet Single (Planeta Singli), yet another intelligent romantic comedy sparkling with humor and wit, came close, with almost 2 million people flocking to the cinemas, and reviewers just as enthusiastic as they were about the biggest American hits of the year. The Polish phase of Okorn’s career, however, might be drawing to a close. He recently started working on Life in a Year with Jaden Smith and Cara Delevingne, two hot Hollywood starlets with the potential to set the international box-office on fire. And make their director a household name – and not just in Europe.
cuch), has never been interested in taking the easy route. Instead, he started challenging himself with playing complex characters on the edge of maturity, using his all-too-obvious looks to emphasize their internal struggles. This strategy has proved astonishingly fruitful for Gierszał, who is now only a year shy of 30. Since his first lead role in Jan Komasa’s The Suicide Room
(which opened the Panorama section of the 2012 Berlinale), where he plays a troubled teenager who begins to lose himself in virtual reality, Gierszał has amassed an impressive array of characters. He made a young and immature smuggler of the 1990s someone that audiences could relate to in Yuma (dir. Piotr Mularuk). In the Sundance-awarded Lasting (dir. Jacek Borcuch), he added a surprising poignancy to the story of Michał, whose unexpected holiday fight takes his life for a spin. And last year, he was seduced by cannibalistic mermaids in yet another Polish Sundance success, Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s The Lure. Gierszał next appears in the new Urszula Antoniak film Beyond Words (photo), and in Łukasz Palkowski’s Double Ironman, where he plays Jerzy Górski, a real-life drug addict who became a star athlete and won the “Death Race”.
Slovenian-born Mitja Okorn, who has already shot two box office hits in Poland, has just landed on Variety’s “10 Europeans to Watch” and is working on a film with Jaden Smith and Cara Delevingne Darek Kuźma Okorn established himself as a major talent before coming to Poland, through directing short films, music videos, commercials, and an independently produced feature Here And There (Tu pa tam). But it is in Poland that Okorn has honed his skills and become the director he is today a confident and passionate visual storyteller with a knack for depicting every possible
shade of romantic feeling. His commercial breakthrough came in 2008, when he adroitly handled the intricacies of the hugely popular TV series 39 and a Half. This gave him the boost he needed to take a shot at directing a feature in his new country. To put it mildly, it went well. In 2011, Okorn became the uncrowned
A BRIGHT STAR Polish actor Jakub Gierszał, one of Variety’s “10 Europeans to Watch” appears in Spoor, which has been entered in the Main Competition at the Berlin Film Festival Darek Kuźma With his wavy golden hair, earnest smile and boyish charm, Jakub Gierszał could have easily become the poster boy for popular Polish roman-
tic comedies and shameless tear-jerkers. Fortunately, the young actor, who made his screen debut in 2009 with a head-turning supporting part in the Sundance-screened All That I Love (dir. Jacek Bor-
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LITTLE CRUSHES, MIGHTY HEART The first film produced was shown in Rotterdam and Cottbus. Meet Agnieszka Dziedzic, a producer prepared to do anything - even buy a bus ticket for two fish - for a film Sebastian Smoliński
©© JAKUB BURAKIEWICZ
Entering the Koi Studio offices feels like turning up to a 1930s tea party. This old villa in downtown Warsaw is full of stylish ornaments and classy interiors. One apartment houses a company that was only founded in 2012, but which is now one of the most hospitable places for emerging and arthouse filmmakers in Poland. Agnieszka Dziedzic runs Koi Studio together with the DoP Jakub Burakiewicz. The first feature film produced by the duo was Little Crushes (2014), directed by Aleksandra Gowin and Ireneusz Grzyb. The film had its world premiere in Rotterdam. Koi Studio is currently working on several projects, including a new film by Little Crushes co-director Grzyb, and The Art of Understanding (dir. Matej Bobrik), a documentary about Japan. The company is also working on several projects with foreign partners. “This is the most common way of making movies in Europe nowadays,” says Dziedzic. “I’m also open to being a minority producer, as I was with Whatever Happens Next, a German film produced by Stefan Gieren.” Crime film for kids Dziedzic wanted to be an art curator before she knew her calling was in film production.“Which is a pretty similar job. I think that gathering various ideas, connecting talented artists, and keeping your eye on the big picture are what I like most.” She took her first steps in the film industry while studying art history and cultural studies at the University of Warsaw. “I had a lot of friends at film schools and I was helping them with their projects,” she recalls. “I realized that it wasn’t a hobby anymore, because it was actually taking up 100% of my time. I thought that maybe I should stop kidding myself and just call it a job.” And so she did. Dziedzic and Burakiewicz began producing shorts and music videos, as well as renting film equipment and making commercials, to
finance new independent projects – the same strategy they’ve employed ever since. Dziedzic also seized every learning opportunity available, including the EAVE training. Koi Studio has been catering to young filmmakers who think in idiosyncratic, original ways, from day one. “One of my strong points is that, as a young producer, I know these people. They’re usually friends or friends of friends. Almost all the directors I’ve worked with I’ve met thanks to just two handshakes.”After Little Crushes became an arthouse hit in Poland and abroad, Dziedzic went looking for new challenges. She realized that she had to have several projects at different development or production stages on the go at any one time. Koi Studio is currently putting the finishing touches on its second feature, The Real Trouble (dir. Marta Karwowska), a crime film for young audiences. There wasn’t much interest in children’s films when Dziedzic started working on the project. “We’ve now secured theatrical distribution in Poland for September 2017, and we’re more than eager to sell it to foreign markets,” she says. Colorful and rapidly growing The Real Trouble is Marta Karwowska’s feature debut. Karwowska is impressed with Dziedzic’s devotion to her film. “She is a real partner – I can discuss every artistic detail of the production with her. She knows the script by heart, has read every version of it, and makes intelligent comments. But the main thing is that the movie is as dear to her as it is to me.” Dziedzic’s co-worker, Agnieszka Skalska, agrees. “She’s completely immersed in every project handled by Koi Studio, but at the The company is also same time, she creates working on several a comfort zone in which projects with foreign artists can feel safe and partners at ease.” When asked about the company’s peculiar name, she tells a story which sounds like a private myth. “Before we started our business, we were making And Nothing Around, a short directed by Marta Prus. In one of the scenes, Kuba, the cinematographer, really wanted to have a koi carp, because it’s orange, has vivid colors, and looks impressive in the frame. The only seller of this fish in Poland sent us two carps by bus and asked us to send them back alive, so that he could give us a discount. I remember going to the station in the morning and asking for 2 tickets for koi carps. It was so grotesque!” This exotic fish could well be said to encapsulate the spirit of Koi Studio - that colorful, rapidly developing, and one-of-a-kind place where producers treat filmmakers as part of their own creative families.
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ONE ANGRY WOMAN Denial, a gripping legal drama starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson and Timothy Spall, was shot on location in Poland, London and USA
Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz) with her legal team
A red-haired woman marches vigorously through the cobblestone city square. She is angry, she is determined, she is Rachel Weisz. And she is in Krakow, one of Poland’s most picturesque cities. Weisz plays Deborah Lipstadt, the historian and writer sued for libel by Holocaust denier David Irving (Timothy Spall). The trial will be held in an English court, which means that Lipstadt has to prove that the Shoah actually happened. She visits the Auschwitz Death Camp accompanied by her head barrister Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson). Lipstadt’s legal team then heads to court to prove that this incomprehensible crime against humanity actually did happen. Denial is based on real events as told in Lipstadt’s book History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier. Production manager Shayne Fiske Goldner from Participant Media started looking for a Polish crew long before
production began in December 2015. The company’s impressive list of credits includes Steven’s Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and Lincoln, Pablo Larrain’s Neruda, and Tate Taylor’s The Help. “Shayne was asking around for Polish producers, but couldn’t get any clear recommendations. All she heard was a lot of stories about a producer from the older generation,” says Marta Habior from No Sugar Films, who ended up being Goldner’s pick. “Shayne insisted she would find someone A few months later, younger. She checked out Habior received a call No Sugar Films, because from Los Angeles. we’d already provided “It was Shayne, who services for Auschwitz, had just watched a beautiful documentary a rough cut of the produced by Steven Spielfilm.”
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Ola Salwa
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berg,” she adds. After a few Skype conversations and a quick trip from L.A. to Poland and back, Habior and her business partner Marta Lewandowska were hired. After many months of preparation, the Denial crew landed in Poland. Habior noticed that the production team was efficient and focused. “Everyone saw to it that the actors were comfortable. I think Polish actors would love to have working conditions like that,” she says when asked about working on set with an American crew. The Film was also supported by the Krakow Film Commission, which had already worked on many international film projects. According to the producers, Gary Foster and Russ Krasnoff, from Krasnoff/Foster Entertainment, “Filming in Krakow, Poland, was a special experience for the Denial cast and crew. We were excited about working with a first class international crew of British and Polish filmmakers. And we were grateful for the Krakow Film Commission’s support.” The Martini Shot was taken in Krakow on January 31, 2016. A few months later, Habior received a call from Los Angeles. “It was Shayne, who had just watched a rough cut of the film. She was very happy and had called us up to thank us once more for our efforts. That was really nice, and also ennobling,” says Habior. 2016 was particularly generous to the ladies of No Sugar Films. The co-productions they worked on, viz. the Mexical-Polish La Habitación and the LithuaniADVERTISMENT
an-Polish The Saint attracted sizeable crowds at many film festivals, including the Warsaw Film Festival. Denial had its world premiere in Toronto in September. The reviews were extremely positive and it was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Film in January 2017.
DENIAL Director: Mick Jacson. Screenplay: David Hare, Deborah Lipstadt. Cinematography: Haris Zambarloukos. Music: Howard Shore. Cast: Rachel Weisz, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Spall. Producers: Gary Foster, Russ Krasnoff.
Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson) investigates Auschwitz
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SCULPTING IN TIME Jolanta Dylewska established herself as a major talent in the male-dominated world of cinematography without sacrificing what she holds most dear Darek Kuźma
You have probably seen the name Jolanta Dylewska crop up time and again – Best Cinematography, Slamdance Film Festival (2001), Camerimage Golden Frog (2011), one of “10 Cinematographers to Watch” (Variety magazine, 2012) – but equally probably, know little, if anything, about her work. That is because Dylewska, a prominent cinematographer and documentary filmmaker in her native Poland, but little known outside the country, has never really cared to impose herself on the audience. You have to discover her on your own. This is bound to end with a strong infatuation with her exceptional visual sensibility and her ability to – as she so eloquently puts it when discussing what cinematography means to her – “make something visible out of things not previously visible – things that have only existed as words in a screenplay.” Tough and gentle That peculiar kind of anonymity began to fade away with Agnieszka Holland’s Academy Award-nominated In Darkness, which made Dylewska shine as never before. She was not comfortable with that, and quickly went back to working with independent filmmakers on passion projects. But Holland is about to turn the spotlight on Dylewska again. Their most recent collaboration, Spoor, an offbeat psychological crime story with what promises to be a very special depiction of contemporary rural Poland, is being screened in the Main Competition of the Berlinale. “This was an enormous challenge for me,” says Dylewska. “The world created by the author of the novel, Olga Tokarczuk, is such an idiosyncratic place, both in detail and as a whole, that I was afraid the film’s images would not be up to the task of transmitting its energy onto the screen. Apart from that, Agnieszka Holland is a director of immense visual prowess and technological knowledge. Working with her is never easy, and can even be painful, but seeing her satisfied is the most precious thing in the world.”
DYLEWSKA FILM PICKS
FIRST ONE: Visconti’s The Damned. I understood the power of cinema.
FAVORITE ONE: There are many. Right now, I feel closest to Andrzej Wajda’s Pilate and Others.
ONE SHE’D HAVE LIKED TO WORK ON I do regret that I will never work with the young Werner Herzog.
The accolades that Dylewska’s work on Spoor is bound to receive ought to be taken as an acknowledgment of the path she has chosen and never sidetracked from. You see, cinematography is still considered the preserve of men, despite numerous attempts to provide women with equal opportunities. Dylewska, who started shooting her first student films in the mid-1980s, remembers that: “The first few days in film school were the most difficult. There, for the first – and last – time I regretted not being a man. But after a while, male directors began to trust me,” she says. Dylewska is viewed by co-workers as a gentle and caring person with a winning personality, but her chosen career has forced her to be strong-willed, persistent and tough. Fortunately, however, she has never had to forsake her poetic soul. “I love this profession. It lets me tap into the flow of time with my camera, and freeze it forever.” Rejecting Hollywood Sculpting in time with light, camera and her cinematographer’s toolkit, has become one of Dylewska’s driving passions. Another is working with talented, non-conformist directors with similar sensibilities to her own. These include Poland’s Przemysław Wojcieszek and Mariusz Grzegorzek, and Kazakhstan’s Sergei Dvortsevoy, with whom she shot the extraordinary Tulpan on the dusty, uninviting steppes. “Films have to be personal. Our feelings and thoughts penetrate our work. We might make films what they are, but equally, films make us who we are. What I shoot, and with whom I shoot, influences me as a human being,” says Dylewska, revealing something of her personal philosophy. “I had no sooner won the Golden Frog for In Darkness when I received an offer from Hollywood, but I turned it down. I decided to stick with Sergei Dvortsevoy’s next project because I always discover new things with him. We are shooting for the fifth consecutive winter, and I had to turn down seven other jobs, but this is the film I want to shoot, the place I want to be.” Dylewska is also fond of connecting with other people and cultures. “Having shot in many places all over the world, I have found film people to be very similar – open to others, interested in them, and ready to face new challenges,” she reveals. “I like it when working on a set bonds the crew so much that the pain when it’s all over is almost physical.” Of the many things that make her tick after all the years as a cinematographer, one is the most dear to her heart. “What I like most about this job is the energy created on set. I feel responsible for conveying it intact to the viewer.” And she does that beautifully, making the relentless flow of time freeze at least once in a while for those of us who have had the pleasure of discovering her work.
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CURIOUS CASPAR
Artur Zaborski Caspar has no time to relax and never gets bored. To him, the world is a treasure trove. He tries to discover new wonders and find new jewels every day. He can always count on his close friend Ada and his parents, who are as restless and as curious as he is. The series is based on the best-selling book of the same name by Grzegorz Kasdepke, and is designed to appeal to viewers of all ages. “We wanted to tell a story that appealed to children and their parents. It was important for us to focus on kids, but on another level, to speak to grown-ups as we but also have a story layer that speaks to grownups,” says Wojtek Wawszczyk, one of Casparade’s creators.“I really don’t like those animations that appeal more to adults, viz. Shrek. We wanted to avoid the situation where parents pick the series for their kids and make them watch it, either because they think it is
appropriate for their education, or because the adults acutally find it more entertaining than the kids themselves.” Wawszczyk and his colleagues developed the project independently and soon secured financial backing from the MEDIA Programme and the Polish Film Institute. “Still, it was difficult as there was no regular financial support for animated series from Polish Television.” explains Anja Šošić, who produced the series through Human Ark. Eventually, the project received backing from the PFI, Canal+, the National Audiovisual Institute, and MEDIA Programme. The Casparade team found the going hard in the early days, but they were reluctant to shelve the project for financial reasons. “By the time Casparade was in development at Human Ark, we mostly produced commercial projects. This time we wanted to do something different, something we could really get passionate about.” explains Wawszczyk, who began working on a Casparade script with screenwriter and comics writer
©© HUMAN ARK
Meet Caspar, a brisk little boy guaranteed to steal your heart. The new animated children’s TV series about him, appropriately called Casparade, is hugely successful in Poland
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Rafał Skarżycki, and screenwriter Krzysztof Gureczny. Once the writing was completed, the team got to work on translating it into images. They toured film festivals that focused on children’s animations to get feedback on their project and tips from seasoned animators. They got both. Some of the advice they received was general, and some was quite detailed. “For example, we were told that we were focusing too much on the relationship between Caspar and his father, and that we needed to develop a new, female character,” recalls Wawszczyk, adding: “These comments were really important to us. They helped us hone our ideas and convinced us that the project made sense.” The directors team assigned to the project grew to five. Wawszczyk was joined by Kuba Tarkowski and Tomasz Leśniak, with whom he had made the critically acclaimed animated TV series George the Hedgehog. The other two members of the crew were animator Kamil Polak (his animated short The Lost Town of Świteź was presented at the Berlinale in 2011) and well known cartoonist Michał Śledziński. Each director has their own distinctive style of visual storytelling, so before they started working, they established some aesthetic ground rules. This series was made using multiple techniques such as 3D and cut-out. But there is more to Casparade than pretty pictures. “Each episode focuses on an important psychological problem,” says Wawszczyk. ADVERTISMENT
CASPARADE Directors: Jakub Tarkowski, Michał Śledziński, Wojciech Wawszczyk, Tomasz Leśniak, Kamil Polak. Screenplay: Rafał Skarżycki, Krzysztof Gureczny, Wojciech Wawszczyk. Producer: Eliza Oczkowska, Stanisław Dziedzic, Anja Šošić, Maks Sikora. Production company: Studio Human Ark.
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“For example, Caspar has just begun school, so he enters a new environment and meets new people. He is confronted with difficult feelings, such as jealousy, and the challenges of being an individual in a group, and has to come to grips with social inequalities.” he concludes. Šošić adds: “Being able to give children the confidence to single-handedly take on everyday challenges that affect them and the people around them meant a great deal to us. The psychological and social aspects of this story were our priority. We knew that we could have a massive impact on the kids who were going to watch the series, so we felt a great deal of responsibility for offering guidance as well as providing entertainment.” To make the “teaching” part easier and more entertaining, Wawszczyk came up with a character called The Fly Avenger, who looks like a giant half fly-half man and helps Caspar in his endeavors. The superhero of the series has brought the producers a few opportunities for merchandising. “We would like to see toys, school supplies, T-shirts and other things not only with the Casparade but also with the Fly Avenger brand.” explains Šošić. So far, thirteen seven-minute episodes have been produced. But the restless Casparade team is already working on the second season, and trying to drum up international interest and sales. Caspar is not being left unattended.
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TALENTS
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TEAM WORK(S) The Krakow Film Cluster is an association of experienced film professionals and companies. All projects are welcome, whatever the stage of production. The more challenging, the better Ola Salwa
The Cluster comprises production companies, post production studios, and companies that rent filming equipment, casting studios, location scouts, individual producers, foley artists, set decorators, and even accountants. You name the service or crew member you need and they will provide it. “Our job is to support both Polish and foreign producers by recommending film professionals in the Małopolska region,” says General Manager Aneta Zagórska. There are more than 300 companies and individuals in the association, so it makes sense to ask an expert, who knows
the local film industry, which company would be the best fit for the project. All the members of the Krakow Film Cluster are experienced and trusted professionals, so the organization offers security as well as service. “We receive all sorts of requests. Some producers only need a cinematographer or a sound designer, others are looking for someone to co-ordinate shooting in Poland, and others need a Polish co-producer,” adds Zagórska. Along with contact details, Cluster offers special prices and discounts. The organization can easy be contacted by telephone or e-mail, and its representatives travel to film festivals and film markets. “We visited Cottbus and Tallinn in November 2016, we’re at the Berlinale right now, and we’re going to Wiesbaden, Sarajevo, Sheffield, Cannes and Goa later,” says Zagórska. Access to MultiLab (in the Kraków Technology Park) is one of the many services offered. This is a state-of-the art production and postproduction studio equipped with a Red Dragon 6K camera (complete with grip), a set of Compact Prime lenses (Carl Zeiss), DitoGear, an OmniSlider Evolution Motion Control Kit grip, an IDS (Indie Dolly System) dolly system, a Road Jib Pro camera crane, and a Freefly MoviM10 gimbal kit. The lab also offers color grading services (using DaVinci Reslove software, and furnished with a Dolby PRM-4200 Professional Reference Monitor and a Barco DP4K-P digital postproduction projector), 5 separate editing rooms equipped with workstations running specialist film editing software (Avid, Final Cut, Adobe Premiere), Artec Eva and Spider 3D scanners, and a rendering farm. Works in progress as well as completed films can be watched in the screening room. The Krakow Film Cluster has already supported 24, a Bollywood production, Grand Froid, a French-Polish-Belgium co-production (you can read about this project in 2/2016 PFM), two American documentaries – Image Bearers and Nietzsche – and The Alpha Rules, a British documentary. The only thing that an expert recommended by Cluster cannot guarantee is the weather. “When the Grand Froid crew came to Poland, there wasn’t a flake of snow to be found anywhere. This almost never happens in Poland,” recalls Bartłomiej Gocal from Cinelight, one of the companies represented by Krakow Film Cluster. “There was no snowfall for six weeks, but the producers couldn’t wait and shooting began on schedule. The snow started falling a week after the film wrapped.” Making a film is a risky business The organization can and not everything can be easy be contacted by controlled or foreseen, so telephone or e-mail, it’s best to have a collaband its representatives travel to film orator or partner you can festivals and film rely on. markets.
©© PROMO (2)
To make a great film you need a vision, crew, and equipment. Working with Krakow Film Cluster, you only need to have the first one
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MONEY BANK
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HOW TO FIND MONEY IN POLAND Daugavpils
OPERATIONAL PROGRAM FOR FILM PRODUCTION Polish Film Institute
Ternopil
FOR PRODUCERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD Participation of Polish co-producer neccessary DEADLINES There are two application sessions per year
2017
SESSION 1
SESSION 2
January 6-23, 2017;
August 1 - 14, 2017;
REQUIREMENTS You have to hire at least one Polish Head of Department (DoP, Set Designer, Editor, Composer);
The Polish producer’s own contribution must amount to no less than 5% of the expected cost of the Polish financing.
To be eligible for consideration, applications must include the following i.e.: script, director’s statement, synopsis, budget, estimated production costs, script rights agreement;
MINORITY CO-PRODUCTIONS •• A separate selection commission for minority co-productions; •• Bilateral treaty not necessary, even for non-European projects.
MAJORITY CO-PRODUCTIONS FINANCING For a Polish co-producer, the maximum subsidy is:
FINANCING For a Polish co-producer, the maximum subsidy is:
PLN
PLN
2 000 000
REQUIREMENTS FOR MINORITY CO-PRODUCTIONS
4 000 000 approx. EUR 932 000
POLISH BUDGET
MAX. PFI SUBSIDY
30%
50%
70%
E IR T T GE EN UD B
•• For bilateral co-productions, the Polish contribution must be at least 20% of the total budget; •• For multilateral co-productions, the Polish contribution must be at least 10% of the total budget; •• At least 80% of the subsidy must be spent in Poland.
approx. EUR 470 000
50%
subsidy up tu 50% of the total budget
WHO TO BOTHER FOR MORE INFORMATION: Robert Baliński, tel.: +48 22 42 10 387, email: robert.balinski@pisf.pl.
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POLISH-GERMAN FILM FUND Funding institutions: Polish Film Institute, Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA), Mitteldeutsche M edienförderung (MDM) and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. FOR PRODUCERS FROM Poland | Germany Applications for production may only be submitted on condition that an agreement has been signed by at least one Polish producer and at least one German producer based in the region in which MDM and Medienboard operate. In case of development application the German producer must be based in Germany. REQUIREMENTS Two sessions per year in 2016 (application forms and application dates are available on the websites of the Fund’s founders);
The budget of the film should not exceed EUR 750 000;
FINANCING FOR DEVELOPMENT the maximum subsidy is:
EUR 70
For: animated films, creative documentaries, low budget narrative films and/or first films and/or films that present an innovative approach;
FOR CO-PRODUCTIONS the maximum subsidy is:
000
EUR
150 000
Television projects are eligible in exceptional cases, with the exception of television feature films.
Annual budget approximately
EUR
500 000
WHO TO BOTHER FOR MORE INFORMATION: Robert Baliński, tel.: +48 22 42 10 387, email: robert.balinski@pisf.pl.
REGIONAL FILM FUNDS The Polish regional film funds seek film projects by announcing competitions, usually once a year. Basic requirement for projects applying for support is the relation of the production with the local city or region. There are spending conditions for support granted of at least 100% to 150% of the funding spent the region; The Polish regional film funds differ in the size of the annual budget, the forms of support and the amounts to be spent locally. All the Polish film funds provide support of up to 50% ofthe film budget, this may be higher in the case ofdocumentaries and animated films. Foreign producers are also welcome to submit projects, preferably as partners of Polish producers.
1 GDYNIA FILM FUND www.ckgdynia.pl 2 LOWER SILESIAN FILM COMPETITION www.wroclawfilmcommission.pl/dkf 3 LUBLIN FILM FUND www.film.lublin.eu 4 ŁÓDŹ FILM FUND www.lodzfilmcommission.pl
5 KRAKOW REGIONAL FILM FUND www.film-commission.pl 6 MAZOVIA FILM FUND www.mff.mazovia.pl 7 REGIONAL FILM FUND POZNAŃ www.poznanfilmcommission.pl 8 SILESIAN FILM FUND www.silesiafilm.com
11 12
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9 POMERANIA FILM www.pomeraniafilm.pl 10 PODKARPACKIE FILM FUND www.podkarpackiefilmcommission.pl 11 WARMIA AND MASURIA FILM FUND bogumil.osinski@ceik.eu 12 BIALYSTOK FILM FUND emozyrska@um.bialystok.pl
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MONEY BANK
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POLAND IN NUMBERS TITLE
POLISH DISTRIBUTOR
COUNTRY
Pitbull. Niebezpieczne kobiety
KINO ŚWIAT
Planet Single
KINO ŚWIAT
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
DISNEY
Pitbull. Nowe porządki
GROSS IN EUR
ADMISSIONS
SCREENS
RELEASE
Poland
12 998 538
2 791 928
350
11/11
Poland
8 519 874
1 926 090
319
2/5
USA
6 848 230
1 355 188
514
12/15
VUE MOVIE
Poland
6 829 610
1 433 466
277
1/22
Ice Age: Collision Course
IMPERIAL CINEPIX
USA
6 335 074
1 459 376
304
7/29
The Secret Life of Pets
UIP
USA/Japan
6 086 617
1 420 141
278
9/23
Hatred
FORUM FILM
Poland
5 903 945
1 435 732
284
10/7
Bridget Jones’s Baby
UIP
Irleand/UK/France/ USA
5 545 590
1 179 946
210
9/16
Zootropolis
DISNEY
USA
5 447 101
1 263 937
233
2/19
Admission over past years in mln
Breakdown of 2016 admissions by country of origin
Number of premieres in 2016
357
OTHER
1.58%
52.1 USA 33.2 mln
44.7
38.5
145 PL 13 mln
40.4 36.3
130
24.96% 63.67 % 9.79%
EU 5.1 mln
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PL
Average ticket price 2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Gross in mln
EUR
4.36 EUR
227.1
EU
USA
1 EUR = 4,26 PLN
Box Office 2016
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KEY FILM FESTIVALS in Poland APRIL/MAY
INDUSTRY EVENTS MAY/JUNE
NETIA OFF CAMERA International Festival of Independent Cinema � kraków This festival presents works by young filmmakers from all over the world. www.offcamera.pl
Krakow Film Festival� international festival presenting documentaries, animations and short features. www.krakowfilmfestival.pl kraków An
MAY
Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival warsaw A selection of the best feature‑length documentaries. www.docsag.pl Film Music Festival festival devoted to film music. www.fmf.fm
JUNE “Youth and Cinema” Debut Film Festival koszalin Festival for Polish young filmmakers with sidebar section with international debuts. www.mlodziifilm.pl
kraków A
JUNE/JULY
Lubuskie Film Summer of films from the post‑communist block. www.llf.pl
łagów A festival
AUGUST Two Riversides Film and Art Festival kazimierz dolny An event that brings together film and other fields of art. www.dwabrzegi.pl T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival � wrocław A round‑up of films blazing the trail for new trends in cinema. www.nowehoryzonty.pl
OCTOBER Warsaw Film Festival 4 warsaw The latest and most interesting features and documentaries from around the world. A-class festival. www.wff.pl Regiofun. International Festival of Producers � katowice This event presents films made with the support of regional film funds. www.regiofun.pl American Film Festival 6 wrocław New American feature and documentary films. www.americanfilmfestival.pl
JULY Transatlantyk Film Festival łódź An event that combines cinema and music. www.transatlantyk.org.pl Animator International Animated Film Festival poznań Animated films from all over the world. www.animator‑festival.com
SEPTEMBER Gdynia Film Festival most important festival of new feature films. www.festiwalgdynia.pl
gdynia Poland’s
NOVEMBER Etiuda & Anima International Film Festival kraków Student films and animations are shown here. www.etudiaandanima.com Camerimage bydgoszcz This
festival is devoted to the art of cinematography. www.camerimage.pl
DECEMBER Ale Kino! International Young Audience Film Festival poznań Films for young viewers. www.alekino.com
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NETIA OFF CAMERA Pro Industry Professional film industry platform focused on networking and match-making Polish and international filmmakers. The core of the program are round tables, case studies and workshops.
2
Krakow Film Festival KFF Industry A series of events dedicated to documentary and animated films, including KFF Market, discussion panels, pitchings and co‑production meetings. DOC LAB POLAND, a program for Polish documentary filmmakers, focusing on consultation and pitching. Consists of: Docs to Go! (in progress), Docs to Start (in development) and Docs to Buy.
3
T-Mobile New Horizons Polish Days Presentation of the latest completed Polish feature films and works‑in‑progress at closed screenings. Projects in development are also pitched here to the international audience and followed by one‑on‑one sessions.
4
Warsaw Film Festival CentEast Market Presentation of new Polish films and best works‑in‑progress from Eastern Europe. CentEast also organizes workshops for young film critics (FIPRESCI Critics Warsaw Project) and young filmmakers (Warsaw Next).
5
Regiofun. International Festival of Producers Look for Fund Look For Fund forum – one-on-one meetings provide opportunities of presenting projects to potential investors, co‑producers and regional film funds. Accompanied by the open pitching preceded by professional training.
6
American Film Festival US in Progress Event aimed at matching American indie filmmakers, who have nearly completed their films, with European post‑production outlets, festival programmers, sales agents, distributors.
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LOCATE&SHOOT
POLISH SIDEWAYS Poland’s foggy, swampy and hollow landscapes can easily inspire a film. You might even want to shoot one. Your cinematic journey begins right here
©© 567ATOMEK/FOTOLIA, SITRIEL/FOTOLIA
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1 Korzeniowy Dół (literally “Roots Pit”) is a gully in Kazimierz Dolny. Or should we say “in a land far, far away”? 2 Beskid Sądecki is a mountain range in the south of Poland. European beech, silver fir and sycamore trees grow here.
2
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LOCATE&SHOOT
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3 5
3 Podlasie, situated in the north-east of Poland, is full of dense forests (although not pictured here) and vast fields (above).
4 Narew National Park in the Podlasie region is a swampy valley. Narew is one of the few braided rivers in Europe.
5 Mazovia is a region in central Poland with beautiful meadows and pastures. Note that cows are not always included.
ŠŠ PODLASKI49/FOTOLIA (2), MILOSZ_G/FOTOLIA
4
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6 Mazovia. Mysterious white willows seem to await Sleepy Hollow to ride between.
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6 ADVERTISMENT
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LOCATE&SHOOT
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7 Karkonosze is an international mountain range located in the south of Poland and the north of the Czech Republic.
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8 Valley of Barycz is in the Wielkopolska and the Lower Silesia region (Western Poland). These lovely swamps are an important wetland reserve.
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8
If you want to learn more about Polish locations or shooting permits, or find a location scout, see LOCATION GUIDE POLAND
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©© GRZEGORZ MATORYN/FOTOLIA, DZIUREK/FOTOLIA
available at www.filmcommissionpoland.pl
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REMAINS OF THE DAY
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KIDS AREN’T ALL RIGHT Michael Pattison
British film critic Michael Pattinson takes a look at the growing pains in Polish films Adolescence, that period in which innocence and disappointment collide head-on, has been a rich and enduring source of subject matter throughout the history of cinema. From Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) and François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) to Larry Clark’s Kids (1995) and Lukas Moodysson’s Show Me Love (1998), many filmmakers have turned to youth as the wellspring of their first film. And there has certainly been no shortage of such works over the past few years - Richard Ayoade’s Submarine (UK), Fellipe Barbosa’s Casa Grande (Brazil), Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi’s The Tribe (Ukraine),
and Sanna Lenken’s My Skinny Sister (Sweden) immediately spring to mind. In the past year, two young Polish filmmakers have joined this tradition, viz. Bartosz M. Kowalski, whose first feature, Playground, has been stirring up a lot of controversy on the festival circuit, and Anna Zamecka, with her critically acclaimed documentary, Communion. If first features can be read as statements of intent, we might look to these new works as exemplifying two opposing sensibilities in Polish cinema - a tendency to be stylistically imposing, declarative and demonstrative versus a preference for understated aesthetic devices. One is muscular and domineering in its storytelling, the other is adaptive and flexible. Playground succeeds as a film engineered to provoke maximum disgust. That’s the built-in prom-
ise - the depth of your aversion ensures that its images will linger. It sparked mass walkouts at the San Sebastian Film Festival in September 2016 – and I saw why at the Warsaw Film Festival a month later. The offending scene is the finale - a single-take wide shot of two sixth-grade boys on a railway embankment smashing in the skull of a small child they’d just kidnapped in a shopping mall. There were recoils, gasps, shrieks — and, yes, walkouts – in Warsaw too. I’d been drawn to the film on the understanding that it was based, in part, on at least one infamous real-life murder, viz. the 1993 abduction, torture and killing of two-year-old James Bulger, in Liverpool, England, by two sevenyear-old schoolboys. Kowalski, taking cues from Gus Van Sant’s Elephant (2003), eschews any attempt to explain the wince-inducing conclusion, towards which his film inexorably proceeds with ominous precision. Nor does he engage in any moralizing. It is like a horror film in that the act is simultaneously inevitable and unfathomable.
©© JAROSŁAW SOSIŃSKI/FILM IT, © PRIVATE ARCHIVE
Playground is not what is used to be. Where is the tree house?
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Communion also focuses on children. Ola is on the verge of adolescence, and her younger brother Nikodem suffers from autism. Burdened with an absent mother and a benign but under-resourced father, Ola has no choice but to take care of Nikodem herself. She assists him with his homework and daily routine, and plans his First Communion. What makes Zamecka’s observational mode most impressive is the trust and intimacy she has earned from her subjects, as well as the fine balance she has achieved in capturing their hardship without exploiting them. Bound for the most part to domestic spaces, the film unfolds like an unscripted (and unsentimental) fiction. Although it is familiar in narrative and storytelling terms, it is sensitive to the particular details of its precocious protagonist’s daily life. ADVERTISMENT
Kowalski’s method, which has prompted comparisons with Michael Haneke, functions differently. The fiction in Playground is crafted in such a way that the quotidian minutiae of its young protagonists’ lives assume an almost documentarian quality. The director sustains his shots, refusing to look elsewhere when a character disappears beyond a doorframe, out of shot. We wait, and we wait, until the character reappears. The resulting tension is also a warning: look at something long enough, or spend enough time in one place, and bad things will begin to happen. And bad things do happen. Playground makes a point of being a horror film etched from the socially mundane. Its thesis derives its meaning from unfathomable despair: a kind of all-encompassing evil, unutterable, and — it has to be said — hysterical. Everything
about Playground ultimately supports Kowalski’s vision of horror. By scrupulously strategizing against any social (and by extension psychological) understanding of why young children commit appalling acts, Kowalski’s film reminded me of another recent debut feature about adolescents, viz. Danish filmmaker Jeppe Rønde’s English-language Bridgend — one of the most execrable films I saw in 2015. By contrast, Zamecka’s observational mode is quietly interrogative, shaped around something more dynamic. The horrors in her film are understandable, for they are the socially governed, unpleasant backdrop of her real focus – her characters – who emerge not as conduits for an argument (as the young protagonists do in Playground), but as rich and real, resilient and strong. In a word: humane.
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REMAINS OF THE DAY
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POLISH STORY: COMING TO AMERICA Michał Oleszczyk
As the Polish film industry continues to lobby for much-needed legislation to provide tax incentives for foreign crews, film critic and Gdynia Film Festival Artistic Director Michał Oleszczyk takes a look at notable Polish films that were shot abroad While visionary epics in the vein of Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Pharaoh (1965) and Andrzej Żuławski’s On the Silver Globe (1978/87) used locations such as Uzbekistan and the Gobi Desert to portray ancient Egypt and an imaginary parallel universe, respectively, several Polish films made imaginative use of locations in the country that for the entire duration of communism (1945-89) was seen as the epitome of freedom, viz. the United States. Shooting in the U.S. was invariably a challenge for Polish crews, who had to stretch a budget that barely covered lunch every day. And yet, Andrzej Wajda’s masterful The Conductor (1980) opens with a dazzling sequence of Krystyna Janda breezing through the Big Apple as a tourist. As the opening credits roll and Beethoven’s Fifth blasts out of the speakers,
Sławomir Idziak’s camera accompanies Janda on a sunny New York day, as her character is driven around, trying to take in all the excitement of a vast metropolis that is unlike anything she’s ever seen. Idziak and his camera here is fervid and rapturous – it tries to convey New York as a place almost too intense to absorb for someone brought up under the drabness of communism. Janda’s character might be ecstatic, but she has absolutely no understanding of the inner workings of a city that is indifferent to destitution. She is shocked by the sight of a homeless person being ignored by passers-by. Her journey from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Times Square area (still in all its squalid splendor at the time of the shooting), makes for one fascinating opening sequence.
New York featured prominently in at least two other Polish films, viz. Janusz Zaorski’s Happy New York (1997) and Paweł Karpiński’s Magician from Harlem (1988). The former focused on the Polish diaspora in Greenpoint, while the latter was a fish-out-of-water comedy about a black basketball player hired by a losing Polish team. It is, however, the eminently Polish city of Chicago that was to become the location for one of Poland’s alltime favorite comedies, viz. Sylwester Chęciński’s Big Deal (1977). The final installment of a much-loved comedic trilogy centered on the mismatched neighboring families, the Karguls and the Pawlaks, who bring their Eastern Polish animosities to their new home. Their mission is to settle some family business, but the Pawlaks’ beloved granddaughter Ania (Anna Dymna) turns the journey into something much more. The wide-eyed Ania is not only eager to explore the great city of Chicago, but takes a shine to the family’s recently discovered distant cousin, who happens to be a gorgeous young black woman (played by one Duchyll Martin Smith, whose only prior screen credit was a blaxploitation flick Monkey Hu$tle [1976]). Comical misunderstandings abound, the Kargul and Pawlaks’ old-world racial prejudice gets straightened out, and DoP Zygmunt Samosiuk gets to shoot some great location footage, including a dynamic sequence shot entirely during the annual Casimir Pulaski Day Parade. In an inadvertently amusing touch, most of the interiors were shot in Polish studios in Wrocław, rendering most of the furniture distinctly un-American (even though we can hear gunshots coming from outside the windows at night – a clear sign we have entered the crime-ridden, corrupt world of western capitalism). Those and several other sequences (including work by Polish artists shot entirely in the States, including Yurek Bogayewicz, Lech Majewski, Agnieszka Holland, etc.) offer a fascinating glimpse into how Polish filmmakers perceived America – or perhaps, how they imagined it to be. The lure of the New World withstood every attempt of communist propagandists to render it undesirable. The films discussed here are the most eloquent testament there is to that.
©© POLFILM/EAST NEWS, © SŁAWOMIR PULTYN
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