02/07/2015 - Marcin Koszalka, a renowned DoP and documentary director, will unveil his fiction feature debut in the official competition

The Red Spider by Marcin Koszalka

Next Monday, the international competition of the 50th Karlovy Vary Film Festival (3-11 July 2015) will present the world premiere of The Red Spider [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Marcin Koszalka
film profile], which marks the first steps taken by Poland’s Marcin Koszalka, a renowned DoP and documentary director, into the world of fiction. Incidentally, the filmmaker is by no means a stranger to the Czech gathering, as he received a Special Mention from the Jury there in 2009 for his documentary Till It Hurts, as well as the Best Documentary Award for a Film Under 30 Minutes Long in 2011 for The Declaration of Immortality.

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Selected last year at Karlovy Vary, in the Work in Progress section, The Red Spider is based on a completely true story – that of Karol Kot, a serial killer who earned the nickname "The Vampire of Krakow" and became a veritable media sensation in the intensely communist Poland of the 1960s. As the director explains, in this psychological thriller, which features a screenplay written by Marta Szreder, "It’s not a matter of guessing who the killer is and why, as in the classic crime films, but rather of showing a force of temptation by evil, how we can discover a maleficent power within ourselves whose source is unknown, and how we submit to it."

The cast of The Red Spider (the shoot for which wrapped in March) brings together Adam Woronowicz, Filip Plawiak, Julia Kijowska, Malgorzata Foremniak, Marek Kalita and Wojciech Zielinski. Interestingly, the director himself took care of the cinematography. Produced by the Mental Disorder 4 studio with backing from the Polish Film Institute and the Krakow Film Fund, the feature will come out in Polish theatres on 20 November.

(Translated from French)