POLISH FILMMAKER AWARDED AT FINNISH FESTIVAL TAMPERE

44th edition of short film festival in Tampere ended yesterday evening. On the last day of the festival, one of the main awards went to the animated film by Michał Poniedzielski “Moonshine.”

 In this year's international competition, four Polish films competed for the awards, namely “Ziegenort” by Tomasz Popakul, “The Boys” by Paweł Orwat, “Uterus” by Anna Kosińska and the award-winning “Moonshine” by Michał Poniedzielski. For the last three films, the screening in Tampere was also the international première.  In the international competition, 61 animated, fiction and documentary films took part. 

Jury consisting of Gabriel Gauchet (the author of the fiction film “The mass of men” awarded the Grand Prix at last year's festival), African director Riaan Hendricks, German director Till Nowak, Finnish director Virpi Suutari as well as Latvian coordinator of the 2Annas Film Festival, Anna Veilande-Kustikova, gave the Best Animated Film award to the animation “Moonshine” by Poniedzielski.  Grand Prix award went to Russian animation “Bum-bum doch’rybaka” by Ivan Maximov.

“Moonshine” is a professional debut of Michał Poniedzielski, a graduate of Łódź Film School. Delicately-built citizen named Szczepan slowly descends into madness because of great and unrequited love. Helena, full of dark charm,  rejects his courtship. She is in love with "a star from the sky" – a beautiful  crescent mirrored in the surface of water. Szczepan, who despairs because of the unrequited love,  makes a journey to a world between reality and dream. The latest film by the author of the cult “A film with no flies on” (2004), Michał Poniedzielski, was produced by Lava Films.

Additional Polish feature in the programme was the meeting with Łukasz Ostalski, the director of the fiction film “The Mother”, which won the Audience Award last year.  The film by Ostalski went to the non-competitive section “5 Star Stories” within the frame of which four internationally acclaimed films with exceptional scripts were shown. 

This year's edition of the festival took place from 5 to 9 March.

You can read more about the programme and the full verdict on the festival's official website