The festival's programmer and founder is the director Michael Moore ("Fahrenheit 9.11, " "Bowling for Columbine," "Where to Invade Next"). At the recently finished 12th edition of the festival, 120 feature-length films and 107 short films were shown in 12 cinemas, 123 thousands of tickers were issued. "Snails" was given the honourable mention in the short film competition – it is a great joy because of the standing and the scale of the festival. The award at Traverse City Film Festival is, after the audience award at AFI Docs, yet another American laurel for the film by Grzegorz Szczepaniak.
The short documentary film tells about Polish snail breeding industry. Snail breeders export the snails not only to France or Italy, but they also conquer China and Japan. Due to the popularity of the snail breeding business, two friends, Andrzej and Konrad, decided to start their own snail farm and earn millions. They are shown the ins and outs of the snail industry by the expert, Mr. Grzegorz Skalmowski, known as "the Snail King."
"Snails" had its Polish première at the 55th Krakow Film Festival and was shown within the frames of the International Documentary Film Festival "Sunny Side of the Doc" in La Rochelle, as well as at the 19th Rhode Island International Film Festival. "Snails" participated in the 31st. Warsaw Film Festival (Polish Short Film Panorama) and at the 58th DOK.Leipzig (International Programme Short Film). The film won the Silver Eye Award at the 7th East Silver Market, a honorary special mention at the 22nd Etude & Anima in Krakow and the Special Mention for a humorous approach to the documentary film art at the 22nd IFF "Listapad" in Minsk. In April 2016 it won the audience award at Go Short – International Short Film Festival in Nijmegen in the Netherlands ("Snails" participated in the Student Competition BREAKING SHORTS) and participated in "It's All True" ("É Tudo Verdade") in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the most important documentary film festival in South America. In June, "Snails" won the audience award at AFI Docs – documentary film festival organised in Washington, D.C. by the American Film Institute.
You can read more about Traverse City Film Festival here.
source: Wajda Studio