POLISH DOCUMENTARY „THE WHISTLE” WINS SUNDANCE!

The Short Film Competition award ceremony of Sundance Film Festival was held yesterday in Park City, USA. A documentary by Grzegorz Zariczny, “The Whistle”, triumphed winning the Grand Jury Prize. Congratulations!

The pro­tag­o­nist of "The Whis­tle" – Marcin – a young man from a vil­lage near Krakow, doesn’t rush his way to­wards adult­hood – which his mother doesn’t ap­prove of. She ex­pects him to make life-​changing de­ci­sions, find­ing a bet­ter job and a wife. Marcin is also a bur­geon­ing foot­ball ref­eree – every week he has to bear un­re­fined com­ments and re­marks about his work, made by play­ers and fans alike of am­a­teur teams.

The jury of Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val Short Film Com­pe­ti­tion awarded “The Whis­tle” with Grand Jury Prize. The jury ap­pre­ci­ated its abil­ity of „sur­pris­ing the jury with its depth and hu­mour”  and the way it „skill­fully cap­tures an every­day story and makes it mag­i­cal”.  Don Herzt­feldt, an­i­ma­tor and jury mem­ber who read the ver­dict en­thu­si­as­ti­cally added that the jury sim­ply loved this „beau­ti­fully com­posed and ex­cep­tion­ally paced film”. Grze­gorz Zariczny’s suc­cess seems even big­ger if we take a look at the num­bers. Over 8000 films were sub­mit­ted to the Short Film Com­pe­ti­tion this year while only 65 ti­tles got se­lected for the pro­gramme.

The film was pro­duced by Munk Stu­dio func­tion­ing within the frames of  Pol­ish Film­mak­ers As­so­ci­a­tion as the part of the "First  Doc­u­men­tary" pro­gramme. The film’s co-​producer is Full Film Ser­vice. The project of "The Whis­tle" was de­vel­oped at Dragon Forum 2008. The film is rep­re­sented by Krakow Film Foun­da­tion that col­lab­o­rates with Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val on pre­s­e­lect­ing Pol­ish doc­u­men­tary and short films for the fes­ti­val.

It is al­ready the fifth Pol­ish film se­lected to the short-​length com­pe­ti­tion in the last four years. Last year, Poland was rep­re­sented at Sun­dance by short fic­tion "Frozen Sto­ries" by Grze­gorz Jaroszuk. Poles had also cel­e­brated their big mo­ments in Sun­dance – two years ago the doc­u­men­tary "Out of reach" by Jakub Stożek won the Spe­cial  Men­tion, while four years ago, two fic­tion films were shown in the same com­pe­ti­tion: “Echo” by Mag­nus von Horn, as well as "Birth­day” by Jenifer Malmqvist made in co-​production with Swe­den.

Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val is one of the most im­por­tant fes­ti­vals of in­de­pen­dent cin­ema world­wide. Every year it re­ceives over ten thou­sands film sub­mis­sions. The fes­ti­val is or­ga­nized an­nu­ally since 1978 and it takes place in  Park City, Utah, USA.

More in­for­ma­tion about the fes­ti­val can be found at its web­site.

You can watch the award cer­e­mony here.

More in­for­ma­tion about the film are avail­able here and here.