20/06/2025 - The French sales agent is adding Natalia Dołgowska’s project to its line-up, a movie produced by Kijora Film, Bellota Films and Cinedokke and set to be pitched in La Rochelle

French international sales agent The Party Film Sales (headed by Sarah Chazelle and Etienne Ollagnier) is setting a course for the 36th Sunny Side of the Doc (running from 23-26 June 2025), where it’s due to kick off pre-sales on a new title in its line-up: On the Way by Polish director Natalia Dołgowska.

This film project (with a 75-minute running time) is just one of the movies selected for the Pitch sessions (see the news) taking place within the international market unspooling next week in La Rochelle. It will be presented on Wednesday 25 June within the Nature & Environment category. The story revolves around a question which is both simple and highly complex: how far can we end up distancing ourselves from nature by trying to be in the middle of it? Amidst the serene beauty of the Polish Tatra mountains, an asphalt road leads to a picture-perfect but heavily overcrowded mountain lake. Generations of hikers change over as the seasons shift, but they all tread the same path, much to the animals’ dismay. The film reverses the usual perspective and tries to look at humans through nature’s eyes.

The Party Film Sales’ sales team, led by Estelle de Araujo and Samuel Blanc, came across the project last year in the Visions du Réel Festival. The film is being shot across four seasons, with three of them already in the bag and only autumn remaining to be filmed in a few months’ time.

As explained by Natalia Dołgowska (offering up her first feature, having previously signed her name to exhibitions, publications and hybrid documentaries, and having attended the IDFA and CPH:DOX, among other events), "there’s a personal dimension to this project, but it’s the first one which focuses on the mountains themselves. Growing up in a mountainous region, I was part of a community that had always been fascinated by everything relating to nature. We were constantly surrounded by it, so we learned organically how to look after it. There were simple rules, and it never occurred to me that other people wouldn’t be aware of them. It was like knowing how to tie your shoelaces or how to use a knife and fork. Even very young children knew, for example, not to pick flowers or plants, or not to leave an apple core behind – that apple doesn't belong to the mountain ecosystem. Every year, millions of tourists come to my hometown, Zakopane. One of the biggest attractions is the Eye of the Sea Lake, situated in the middle of the Tatra nature reserve. People come here to admire nature, and now I’m reversing the situation, observing them whilst making a nature documentary about humans."

On the Way is being produced by Marta Szymanowska and Anna Gawlita on behalf of Polish firm Kijora Film (notably responsible for The Big Chief – unveiled in this year’s Burning Lights competition within the Visions du Réel Festival – and In Ukraine [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Piotr Pawlus, Tomasz Wolski
film profile], which was discovered in the 2023 Berlinale Forum) together with Dominique Barnaud on behalf of French outfit Bellota Films (acclaimed in competition at Sundance at the beginning of the year thanks to Gen_ [+see also:
film review
interview: Gianluca Matarrese
film profile] and in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori line-up in 2023 via The Zola Experience [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gianluca Matarrese
film profile]) and Michela Pini for Swiss firm Cinedokke. It’s also worth noting that France Télévisions has pre-purchased On the Way for its "25 nuances of the documentary genre" selection and that the film will be good to go in autumn 2026.

(Translated from French)