Ki, Crulic and Lynch in competition at Cottbus
Polish cinema is out in force at the 21st Cottbus Film Festival with nine titles in the line-up at the German event which is running from November 1-6. My Name Is Ki [+see also:
trailer
interview: Leszek Dawid
film profile] by Leszek Dawid (see video interview), Anca Damian’s Crulic - The Path to Beyond [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anca Damian
film profile] and Krzysztof Lukaszewicz’s Lynch are notably screening in official competition.
My Name Is Ki (pictured) paints the portrait of a young mother who is trying to break free from the father of her child and rediscover her independence. Winner of the Best Actress Award (for Roma Gąsiorowska) at the latest Gdynia Polish Film Festival, the feature was also presented in Venice Days 2011 (see review).
Polish/Romanian animated co-production Crulic - The Path to Beyond traces the true story of Claudiu Crulic, a Romanian who was imprisoned in Poland and died in 2008 after a hunger strike. Arrested for a theft he denied, he became a victim of the European bureaucratic machinery. The film, which was unveiled in competition at Locarno this summer, is highly original in form, combining hand drawings, photo collage, modelling clay figurines and digital special effects.
Lynch reconstructs an event that received a lot of press coverage in Poland when it passed through the legal system: in July 2005, the inhabitants of a small provincial town beat to death a homeless man who had been terrorising them for weeks.
The Cottbus festival has also selected Jan Komasa’s Suicide Room [+see also:
trailer
interview: Jakub Gierszal - Shooting S…
interview: Jan Komasa
film profile] and directorial trio Wojciech Wawszczyk, Jakub Tarkowski and Tomasz Lesniak’s animated film George the Hedgehog in the Young Polish and German Cinema competitive section; Andrzej Baranski’s Heritage (unveiled in competition at Karlovy Vary) and Piotr Zlotorowicz’s documentary The Charcoals Burners – Pit No.8 in the Focus – Eastern Europe by Regions line-up; Cezary Pazura’s Weekend in the National Hits section; and Lech Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: Lech Majewski
film profile], which opened the festival.
(Translated from French)
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