This year, 21 animated films, 20 documentaries and 30 fictional films were selected for the short film competition. The lineup includes films we could hear of during the last few months, such as Elżbieta Benkowska’s “Olena” presented at the Cannes Festival, Tomek Popakul’s award-winning animation “Ziegenort” or films shown abroad, as “Exit Point” by Jagoda Szelc or “Freestyle life” by Adam Palenta. Apart from professional productions, the competition also included the best films by students at film schools in Katowice (e.g. Mateusz Głowacki’s “Killing Auntie” and Grzegorz Zariczny’s “Our bad winter”) , Łódź (e.g. Marta Prus’s “Eighteenth birthday” and Jędrzej Bączyk’s “Coyote”), Gdynia (“Real Honey” by Sławomir Witek and “The Mother” by Łukasz Ostalski) as well as from Wajda School (e.g. Maria Ząbska’s “Brother Dog” or Monika Pawluczuk “When I’m a bird”). The participating films were judged by the jury formed by Jukka-Pekka Laakso (Tampere festival), Fijona Jonuzi (director) and Laurence Reymond (associate of the Director’s Fortnight section at the Cannes festival).
Winners of the short film competition were announced on Saturday night, during the closing ceremony of the festival. The group of awarded titles included films by Łukasz Ostalski, Marcin Janos Krawczyk and Tomek Popakul.
30-minute long “The Mother” by Łukasz Ostalski, a Gdynia Film School graduate, won the feature film category. His film, also acclaimed the Best Short Film of the Pula festival is a story of a well-known politician – Małgorzata (portrayed by Danuta Stenka) who, confronted with her son’s drug addiction has to make the most difficult decision of her life. When her son needs help, Małgorzata asks her daughter for support. Upon arriving, they find him half-conscious and discover a body of a young girl. In the face of the tragedy, things grow complicated between them, causing old grudges to boil over.
“Mother 24/7” directed by Marcin Janos Krawczyk was hailed the Best Documentary Film. It has already been shown in Poland several times – in May it was selected for the Krakow Film Festival, and in June it won a special distinction award at the Młodzi i Film Festival in Koszalin. The documentary, 30 minutes in length, tells a story of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, a famous painting which travels across Poland over the last 55 years and reaches numerous cities and towns and is handed over to each family willing to host it. The portrait has become the symbol of Polish Mother. Each of the stories discusses faith or the lack of it and on a deeper level they all treat about the role of mothers in our lives.
The nineteen-minute “Ziegenort” authored by Tomek Popakul, a graduate of the Film School of Łódź, was awarded the Best Animation Award. The film is a story about coming of age in the reality of a small town at the seaside. A hardworking father tries to train his teenage son for fisher’s profession. To do this, the introvert fisherman will have to face a serious competition. The world as seen by his son is full of disturbing omens, striking observations that frequently inspire terror. The inspiring graphic animation by Popakul is an attempt to describe angst experienced by an adolescent entering adult life. Since its premiere at this year’s festival in Rotterdam,”Ziegenort” has already won 4 awards at important international festivals, such as the Grand Prix at the festival in Oberhausen and the award for Best Animated Film at the festival in Brooklyn.
Special distinction awards were also handed out at the New Horizons Festival. in the category of animated films one went to Anna Kosińska for “Uterus”. Other films receiving distinction awards are Tomasz Śliwiński’s “Our Curse”, which is to be presented at the festival in Locarno in September and “Monday, Monday” by Bartosz Białobrzeski and Mateusz Pastewka.
More at the official festival’s website