POLISH FILMS AT IDFA
Five Polish documentary films qualified for the participation in this year's edition of the IDFA festival! Two films will compete for the awards in the competition sections, and three will be presented in the non-competing thematic 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 18 to 29 November, and it is the 28th edition of the festival.
"Life of a Butterfly", the documentary film directed by Piotr Bernaś, will compete for the IDFA Award for Best Mid-Length Documentary. The screening at IDFA will simultaneously be the film's international première.
The selection committee qualified the film "Alisa in Warland" by Alisa Kovalenko and Liubova Durepko for the competition for First Apperance.
In the section Best of Fests, showing the films which were successful at film festivals last year, the following documentary films will participate: "Call Me Marianna" by Karolina Bielawska and "K2. Touching the Sky" by Eliza Kubarska. However, "The Dybbuk. A Tale of Wandering Souls" by Krzysztof Kopczyński will be shown in the non-competing section Panorama.
On 22 November, 6 p.m. all guests of IDFA will have an opportunity to meet directors and producers of the presented films and other representatives of Polish documentary film industry at Guests Meet Guests co-organised by Polish Docs and HBO Europe.
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. This year, the film market's video collection includes fourteen Polish documentary films. Apart from the films which qualified for the festival programme, these are, a.i.: "Brothers" by Wojciech Staroń, "Casa Blanca" by Aleksandra Maciuszek, "Unstoppables" by Bartosz M. Kowalski, "Agfa 1939. Journey into War" by Michał Wnuk, "The End of the World" by Monika Pawluczuk, "Plus and minus, or the fly's journey to the East" by Bogdan Dziworski, "Paradise on Earth" by Cecylia Malik, "Grace of God" by Kristján Loðmfjörð, "Talk to me" by Marta Prus, "Piano" by Vita Maria Drygas or Amnesia by Jerzy Śladkowski.
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 last year, the Special Jury Prize went to Hanna Polak for her film "Something better to come."
You can find the full list of films qualified for the festival on the festival's website.