POLISH DOCUMENTARY FILMS AT THE FESTIVAL IDFA

Nine Polish documentary films qualified for the participation in this year's edition of the IDFA festival! Five films will compete for the awards in the competition sections, and four will be shown in the noncompetive sections.

The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam IDFA is the largest and one of the most important documentary film festivals in the world. Every year, it attracts over 100 000 viewers, is visited by several hundred people from the most important organisations in the documentary film industry, and the films shown at IDFA are often festival favourites later on. This year, IDFA is held from November 16-27, and it is the 29th edition of the festival.

"You Have No Idea How Much I Love You" by Paweł Łoziński is invited to the Feature-Length Documentary Film Competition. The screening at IDFA will simultaneously be the film's international première. The documentary film "Icon" by Wojciech Kasperski, which will compete for the award in the Mid-Length Documentary Film Competition there, can also boast an international première in Amsterdam. The international première of the film was held at the 56th Krakow Film Festival.

The selection panel qualified three Polish films to the Best Student Documentary Film Competition: "Daniel" by Anastazja Dąbrowska, "Close Ties" by Zofia Kowalewska and "When Will This Wind Stop" by Aniela Astrid Gabryel. For "Daniel" and "Close Ties", it will be their Dutch première, because their first international screening will be held at the festival DOK Leipzig.

In the section Bests of Fests, showing films which were successful at film festivals last year, the documentary film "Communion" by Anna Zamecka will participate. It won the Grand Prix during the La Semaine de la Critique in Locarno. In the section Paradocs, there is the film by Michał Marczak, "All These Sleepless Nights," and "Right Side of Cello" by Aleksandra Rek is invited to the music documentary film programme.

Within the frames of this year's edition of the festival, the screening of Top 10 films according to Sergey Loznitsa will also be held. Among ten documentary films selected by the director, in addition to works by Werner Herzog and Ulrich Seidl, there is the film "I Don't Know" by Krzysztof Kieślowski. 

The festival is accompanied by film market Docs for Sale, existing since 1996, which is annually visited by approximately 250 representatives of documentary film industry. Just like every year, in the market video collection, there are many Polish documentary films.

Polish documentary films have been present at IDFA since the very first edition, and in recent years, they received some important awards and special mentions at the festival. In 1998, the Award for the Best Feature-Length Documentary was given by the jury to the film by Dariusz Jabłoński, "Photographer." In 2009, the film "Six Weeks" by Marcin Janos Krawczyk won the Award for the Best Short Documentary. A year later, the nomination for the Award for Best Student Documentary went to "A Screening in the Tatry Cinema" by Igor Chojny. In 2012, two Polish films were nominated for the  IDFA awards – "Bad Boy – High Security Cell" by Janusz Mrozowski in the feature-length documentary film competition and "Rogalik" by Paweł Ziemilski in the short documentary competition. In 2013, the nomination for the student documentary film competition was given to "Our Curse" by Tomasz Śliwiński, and a year later, the Special Jury Prize went to Hanna Polak for her film "Something better to come."  Last year, the Festival winner was the film "Don Juan," a Swedish production directed by Jerzy Śladkowski.

You can find the full list of qualified films on the website of the festival.