Sundance Festival, organized annually since 1978, is unquestionably the leader among American festivals, and currently one of the most important film events worldwide, promoting the independent cinema. Every year, over 11 thousand applications come to the festival’s selection. The competition section of the festival encompasses feature and documentary films in the full- as well as short-length category. In the non-competing programme, Sundance presents films in the following sections: New Frontier, Spotlight and Park City at Midnight, as well as the NEXT programme, initiated three years ago, dedicated to films made on an extreme low budget.
This year, 8,102 applications from the entire world were sent to the short-length section. "The Whistle" by Grzegorz Zariczny is in the elite group of films which have been accepted – this year, less than 1% of the films submitted to the competition made their way to the programme. It is already the fifth Polish film during last four years, which was chosen to take part in the short-length competition section. 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 feature 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.
The protagonist of "The Whistle" is Marcin – a young man from a village near Krakow, who slowly enters the adult life. His mother does not like it, she expects from him solid decisions and acts – finding a better job and the future wife. Apart from this, Marcin is a beginner football referee – every week, during the amateur teams’ matches, he has to listen to unrefined comments and opinions about his work from football players and fans…
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 Service and represented by Krakow Film Foundation.
This year’s edition of the festival in Sundance lasts from 17 to 27 January 2013.
More information about the festival, as well as the full list of the competition films is available here