For our May Distributor of the Month interview, we spoke to Karolina Sienkiewicz, the founder of So FILMS, a distribution and production company based in Poland. It works with fiction features, documentaries and shorts, and recently achieved huge success with the Polish campaign for the Oscar- and LUX Audience Award-winning animated film Flow [+lire aussi :
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interview : Gints Zilbalodis
interview : Tapis rouge @ European Fil…
fiche film].

Cineuropa: Could you introduce So FILMS to Cineuropa readers?
Karolina Sienkiewicz: I started the company three years ago this July. The reason why I founded So FILMS is because I had been working in the distribution and publicity sector, also involved with film festivals, for around six or seven years at the time. One project in particular made me think that I could actually do many different things within the sector, and that I should have put everything together under one company. I managed to do so, and now I can choose only the films I want to represent, which I really believe in, which gives me amazing freedom.

What is the business model of your company? What makes you different in the field?
First of all, I'm in this industry because of my passion for cinema, one of the few fields where you can build a career driven by love for the craft, rather than formal education. For instance, I graduated in Law, not film production, as there’s no real academic course that teaches distribution or promotion – you just develop those skills over time. What sets my company apart is that I genuinely follow my gut, and I think that my motto could be YOLO, or “you only live once”. That’s my business model. Of course, financials matter, especially when you're responsible for a team, but they’re just one part of the equation. The real deciding factor is love: I have to truly love the project. When someone pitches a film – whether it’s a short, an animation, a fiction feature or a documentary – I need to see it and fall in love with it. I don’t care about the genre; what matters most to me is quality and emotional connection. Luckily, I have other projects that can balance out my sometimes “reckless” acquisitions. When it comes to this industry, I really believe in independence, spontaneity and, sometimes, uncertainty. That’s what makes my work meaningful.

What could you tell us about the very successful campaign for Flow in Poland?
There was just some magical energy in the film that made me immediately go for it, long before it actually exploded. I figured something in it was beautiful and universal for many different ages and nationalities. But in the end, we're heading towards 180,000 admissions, which for an animated film with no dialogue coming from a small country, shown in Poland, is a massive achievement. We worked on a few strategies to achieve this. The Italian distributors first had this idea of an inflatable cat, and I thought I wanted to do the same, but to take it to the next level. We took this four-metre-high cat to the beach and filmed it with a drone, and it went viral on social media. A lot of people thought it was AI, and I had to make sure they understood it was an actual beach by the Baltic Sea! Distributors from other countries actually reached out to me saying they loved the idea, and I manufactured the cat for the Romanian and Lithuanian distributors. Something else I also find very powerful are stickers because they are easy to do, and people love them. Finally, we put up a mural in Warsaw. We used a reverse graffiti method, which technically means you are not painting on the walls, but you are cleaning them, so you don't need to ask for permission. As Flow is a very environmentally minded film, I thought this was perfect. Even the city council was easy to convince.

What are your plans for Cannes and the near future?
I’ve recently acquired a collection of David Lynch films and started exploring the potential for redistributing classic cinema in Poland. There’s clearly a huge opportunity here, and I’m excited to focus on developing this new branch of my distribution company dedicated to bringing these “oldies but goldies” back to Polish audiences.

Documentaries have also been a core part of my work from the very beginning. My first project as an independent distributor was Maciek Hamela’s In the Rearview [+lire aussi :
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Now, I’m focused on expanding the company’s reach, both in Poland and across Europe. I want to offer a full-scale approach to distribution, from local exhibition strategies to international publicity. When a producer finishes their film and starts their festival journey, I can step in as that all-in-one person handling everything from PR to digital campaigns, press materials and media relations. We combine distribution with in-house publicity, which is something quite rare in Poland. In fact, I’m the only woman in the Polish film industry who has founded a company operating on this scale, covering both distribution and promotional work. And as far as I know, I’m also the youngest to do so. Those are two glass ceilings I’ve had to break, and I’m proud to keep pushing further.