September is the time when several important festivals are held, bringing Polish films to compete with other top short productions of the year. The first one is Message to Man, held annually in Saint Petersburg, which admitted four films from Poland into its short film section, including animations by Izabela Plucińska (“Afternoon”) and Zbigniew Czapla (“Toto”), a documentary by Tomek Jeziorski (“Camp”) and a fiction film by Kristoffer Rus (“The Big Leap”). The latter film will also be presented to audiences in the short film contest at the 21th edition of Raindance in London, where it will battle for prizes along with Tomek Popakul’s animated “Ziegenort” screened in the animation competition. This year’s Raindance festival will feature an interesting lineup of Polish films, including short films such as “Ab ovo” by Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi or Ewa Chruściel’s “The End”.
The end of September marks the beginning of the 26th edition of the Helsinki International Film Festival – Love & Anarchy. The hosts of the festival – deemed Finland’s most important, alongside with Tempere – had three films from Poland invited to the short film competitive section. This includes Julia Kolberger’s “The Easter Crumble”, which will be shown to international audience for the first time, and two other films by graduates of Gdynia Film School – “Olena” by Elżbieta Benkowska and “The Mother” by Łukasz Ostalski.
September 17 is the starting date of Encounters, a prestigious short film and animation festival held in Bristol. The competition will feature a documentary by Paweł Ziemilski (“Rogalik”) and two animations – “Toto” by Zbigniew Czapla as well as Paweł Prewencki’s “Beach”. Another filmmaker to contend for awards at the end of the month is Aleksandra Terpińska – known to festival audiences as the author of “All Soul’s Day”. Her film has made its way into the short film contest of the Milwaukee Film Festival.
It is quite uncommon to see more than four or five films from one country admitted to a festival. Yet, in case of two festivals to be held in September, the selection boards have decided to truly highlight Polish presence. Starting on Friday this week, the St. Petersburg International Festival of Debut and Student Films BEGINNING has admitted as many as twelve short films from Poland – some of them are “Emperor’s toys”, by Krakow-based filmmakers team Grupa ¾, Krzysztof Kasior’s “To war we go” and Piotr Ngoc’s “Steven and the Beetle”, other three – “Rogalik”, “Olena” and “Watermelon” – will be screened out-of-competition. The winners of the festival will be announced on September 20th. The other event which will make Polish short-feature cinema stand out is the Naoussa Film Festival. The programme includes eleven films, e.g. “Our Bad Winter” by Grzegorz Zariczny, “The Fairy-Tale Cookery Chronicle” by Kamil Jaworek and “Miruna” by Piotr Sułkowski. The festival will be held on September 25-29.
September looks promising for animation as well. The beginning of the month proved to be successful, bringing awards for “Baths” (dir. T. Ducki) and “Ziegenort” (dir. T. Popakul) at the Fantoche festival in Switzerland. Polish animations have also made their way into catalogues of 16 other international festivals. Towards the end of the month, Zbyszek Czapla will bring his latest animation “Toto” to the out-of -competition section of the prestigious animated films festival in Ottawa and will also present it at the Calgary IFF, where Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi will be present with her film “Ab ovo”.
Tomek Popakul remains unmatched in terms of festival attendance in September as well. His graduation project, “Ziegenort” will be shown at nine different international festivals in Netherlands, United States and Britain, among others. Five Polish animations have been invited to take part in the 20th edition of the KROK festival. We will get to know the winners tonight and in the meantime we keep our fingers crossed for Iza Plucińska (“Darling”), Marcin Giżycki (“Kinefaktura”), Tomek Popakul (“Ziegenort”) and Zbyszek Czapla (“Toto”).
You may read more on documentary festivals held in September here.
More information is also to be found on our website in the ‘at festivals’ section.