Cineuropa sat down with the Polish distributor to discuss her company’s strategy as well as the connection between its distribution line-up and BNP Paribas New Horizons Festival’s programme

(© Tadek Chyra)

New Horizons Association (NHA), the organiser of the BNP Paribas New Horizons, American Film Festival and Young Horizons film festivals, is a well-known brand among Polish cinephiles. It also runs the biggest arthouse venue in Europe: the New Horizons cinema in Wrocław. Since 2018, the association has also offered theatrical distribution of carefully selected arthouse titles, including Titane [+see also:
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Cineuropa: What’s the connection between the distribution line-up and the BNP Paribas New Horizons Festival’s programme?
Paulina Jaroszewicz: We’re looking for films that are in keeping with the New Horizons Association’s mission, which was shaped years ago. This year, we’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of the BNP Paribas New Horizons Festival, and our mission is basically still the same: to bring the most intriguing films to Poland – movies by filmmakers who talk about important topics through their unique language. Often, these films raise discussions and controversies, often they elicit admiration, and often they don’t. But for some reason or other, they’re important for us, and we feel that they may be important for Polish audiences. There is a relationship between the festival and the distribution label: all of our films have their Polish premiere at our festival. It’s a gesture for our audience, as they can see these films first. And this is a place where we start to think about our films in a distribution context already, pondering which sections they will be screened in. We also invite the filmmakers, so we can prepare a lot of promotional materials, even if the release dates are in five months’ time. This is when the “buzz” around a title is created.

Do you have any say in choosing the films that will enter distribution?
The final programme decisions are up to Marcin Pieńkowski, who is the director of the festival. I am the so-called advisory body, a person who has a lot of influence on these decisions, because I’m observing the market and seeing what people want to watch in cinemas. Of course, we use numbers from recent years, and we see what works. Ultimately, after many discussions, the plan is to release nine movies per year, on average, and three of them are films of exceedingly high artistic value. The rest fit our profile, but they must somehow break even. What has changed in recent years is that we buy half of our line-up based on script – like with Carla Simón’s Romería, which will be in Cannes’ main competition this year. The market logic has caused us to make programming decisions earlier. It has happened that a film we bought before the Berlinale, thinking it would premiere at Cannes, actually opened at Venice. So, we work on the line-up all the time, and we also observe our competitors and check what they’re releasing. There are some weeks in Poland with 15 premieres, so these dates we skip.

Which titles belong to the former group – the ones of high artistic value and probably with modest box-office potential?
Dahomey [+see also:
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And what has been the biggest box-office success?
Close [+see also:
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film profile] by Lucas Dhont. This film met both of these conditions because it reached all of the target groups. And what was also important in this case was the educational aspect. I took part in a discussion panel during this year’s Berlinale about reaching young audiences. I think it’s the most difficult group to reach – and when I say young audiences, I mean the group between 18 and 25 years old. In Poland, we mainly reach people between 30 and 45+, from big cities, who are well educated. And every time we try to broaden the group, we create separate campaigns for different audiences – younger, older and silver. The former is the most difficult to reach, as I said, but I have high hopes here, too. Twenty percent of the audience at our BNP Paribas New Horizons Festival is made up of very young people. I hope we will convince them to go to the cinemas as well, as the venues need to get younger, too.

Do you keep an eye on how the films you distribute perform in other European territories as well?
Since most of the films we have in our line-up are European, we apply for EU funds, which requires us to present a distribution and marketing strategy early on. Thus, they are usually pan-European. There are sales agents who show us strategies for the film in different territories. What I always do is check how the movie has performed, not just in the CEE, but more widely. And it isn’t only important from a box-office point of view, but mainly because of promotional materials. It often happens that the local distributor in Romania, for example, made a fantastic teaser or trailer. I contact them through the sales agent and ask about the conditions for buying these materials, if I feel they would work in our territory. I do the same for online campaigns.