“THE ISLAND” WINS THE SHORT FILM COMPETITION IN ROTTERDAM

Yesterday, the Chilean-Polish-Danish coproduction “The Island” by Katarzyna Klimkiewicz and Dominiga Sotomayor won the short film competition at the festival in Rotterdam. The film received the prestigious Canon Tiger Award.

25 films from around the world took part in this year’s competition of the International Film Festival in Rotterdam. “The Island” was the only Polish film in the lineup. The films were assessed by the jury consisting of three film specialists: Mati Diop (French actress and director), Bart Rutten (the curator of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam) and Mika Taanila (Finnish documentary filmmaker and author of avant-garde films).  The jury gave the following reason for awarding “The Island”: it is a stunningly strong, atmospheric film, in which time and space are captured in such a delicate way that the tension and drama pierce the viewer.

“The Island” is a portrait of a family that meets in a holiday house on the Chiloe Island. Waiting for the last person to arrive, the family is absorbed in preparation for dinner together. When the evening comes, strange anxiety appears.

The film was developed within the frames of DOX: LAB at the Danish festival CPH:DOX, whose objective is to connect filmmakers from different countries of the world and enable them to work on projects together. In 2013, 22 directors met in Copenhagen, including Katarzyna Klimkiewicz, the sole representative of Poland. The film was shot in the spring of 2013 at Chiloe Island. Jan Naszewski of New Europe Film Sales is the Polish producer of the film while Maciej Kubicki and Anna Kępińska are the coproducers.

Katarzyna Klimkiewicz: “This film is an experiment for me: we show the world not from the perspective of humans, but from the perspective of the island, which leads its own life. I wanted to capture a certain state of anxiety, sense of danger and helplessness in the face of something which cannot be named”.

You can read more about the film here and on Facebook.    

More on the IFF Rotterdam can be found here

Written on the basis of press material