20/02/2015 - Costume designer Anna Biedrzycka-Sheppard and two documentary shorts by Aneta Kopacz and Tomasz Sliwinski will be there to back up Ida

Joanna by Aneta Kopacz

Ida [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
film profile] by Pawel Pawlikowski, one of the nominees for the Oscar for Best Foreign-language Film, is not the only Polish candidate at the 2015 Academy Awards, which will be handed out on Sunday (read the article on the nominations). Indeed, standing out among the five films that will be duking it out for the title of Best Documentary Short are two Polish productions (Joanna by Aneta Kopacz and Our Curse by Tomasz Sliwinski), and costume designer Anna Biedrzycka-Sheppard has racked up the third nomination of her career for her work on Maleficent by Robert Stromberg (she had previously been nominated for Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg and The Pianist [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Roman Polanski).

Our Curse by Tomasz Sliwinski tells the intimate and personal story of the director and his wife, who are forced to contend with all the problems linked to the serious illness (Ondine’s curse) that their new-born daughter suffers from. As the camera follows them, it traces their many efforts to overcome their pain and keep their hope alive in the midst of this impossibly complex situation. Produced by Maciej Sesicki for the Warsaw Film School and backed by the Polish Film Institute, Our Curse has already won awards at the Lisbon, Sheffield, Aspen, Monterrey, Olten and London Film Festivals. 

Joanna by Aneta Kopacz, meanwhile, paints the portrait of a woman who learns that she has just three months to live, after being diagnosed with an illness. The filmmaker discreetly observes the day-to-day moments of Joanna’s private life with her husband and her five-year-old son. With her beloved little boy in mind, Joanna begins to write a blog, which then gains a great deal of popularity. It is a movie “about love, relationships, illness, tenderness, life, death, time, joy and pain. It is about the here and now,” stated the director. Production duties were overseen by Studio Wajda, with support from the Polish Film Institute. 

(Translated from French)