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FESTIVALS Poland

Cream of Polish films unspool at Gdynia

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Twenty-five of the most recently-produced Polish features will be presented at the 36th Gdynia Polish Film Festival, which opens today and will close on June 11.

The 12 titles in official competition will be judged by a jury headed by filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski (whose new film, The Woman In the Fifth, will hit screens next November), and comprising Israeli director Ari Folman, actress Maja Ostaszewska, opera director Mariusz Treliński and Ludmila Cvikova (film selector for the Rotterdam Film Festival).

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The Platinum Lions for Lifetime Achievement will this year go to Roman Polanski and Tadeusz Konwicki.

Half the films vying for honours in the main category are debut or second features by Adrian Panek (Daas), Leszek Dawid (My Name is Ki), Rafael Lewandowski (The Mole), Bartosz Konopka (Fear of Falling) and Jan Komasa (Suicide Room [+see also:
trailer
interview: Jakub Gierszal - Shooting S…
interview: Jan Komasa
film profile
]
).

The line-up also includes titles already released in Polish theatres, such as Antoni Krauze’s Black Thursday, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jerzy Skolimowski
film profile
]
and Lukasz Barczyk’s Italians [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, as well as new features by Barbara Sass (In the Name of the Devil), Greg Zglinski (Courage), Lech Majewski (The Mill and the Cross [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: Lech Majewski
film profile
]
) and Wojciech Smarzowski (Rose).

"These 12 titles represent the cream of this year’s Polish films and they can be shown to audiences from across the world," commented Michal Chacinski, the festival’s new director.

The festival is hosting another competitive section with film school productions to be judged by an international jury headed by director Paula Markovitch. There will also be a Panorama of Polish Cinema with nine recent titles, including Andrzej Barański’s The Heritage, Krzysztof Lukaszewicz’s Lynch and Wieslaw Saniewski’s The Winner.

Finally, the Panorama of Central and Eastern European Cinema is dominated by films by young Hungarian directors and Agnes Kotsis (Adrienn Pal [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Agnes Kocsis, director of P…
film profile
]
) is this year’s special guest at Gdynia.

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(Translated from French)

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