News

Coming off another year marked by uncertainty and conflict, ordinary, unlikely heroes take center stage in a slew of new shows. While crime especially the Nordic-inspired kind is not going anywhere, and there are quite a few spectacles waiting around the corner, including Mipcom world premiere “Concordia,” intimate stories about families and friends butting heads but ultimately trying to come together continue to dominate the market stage. There are also more portrayals of strong, complicated women who dare to dream big today or in the past. The following is a list of some of the buzziest titles at Mipcom.

“After the Party”

(ITV Studios)

Penny Wilding (played by Robyn Malcolm) likes to keep herself very busy: she is a science teacher, basketball coach, environmental activist, mother and grandmother. Famously outspoken and suffering no fools, she alienates many in her close-knit community. But Penny is perfectly fine with that.

She is harboring a painful memory,...

A polish biographical drama directed by Daniel Jaroszek that discusses the life of a criminal, Patryk Galewski (Piotr Trojan), and his rehabilitation under the observation of a priest Fr. Jan Kaczkowski (Dawid Ogrodnik), “Johnny” presents a case to comprehend and defend whether there it’s possible to change human nature. The plays of Shakespeare have proven that human nature cannot be changed or that it remains constant. You can consider ambitious Macbeth, indecisive Hamlet, or jealous Iago; from the start to the end, these characters remain the same. Although geneticists have given us reason to believe that there is a possibility of changing human nature, there are plenty of pieces of evidence that even after having been ruled since 1949, the Chinese personality hasn’t changed from individualistic to communitarian. But psychologist Robert Kurzban gave us a ray of hope that human nature can be introduced to a different perspective and allowed to nurture that perspective.

"Maciej, we have to finish what we started." Netflix has debuted the full-length official trailer for a Polish mountain climbing thriller titled Broad Peak, from filmmaker Leszek Dawid. This one will be streaming on Netflix in September for those interested. Broad Peak is based on the true events of Maciej Berbeka - the legendary Polish mountaineer, member of the Ice Warriors group, who wanted to reach the top of one of the most dangerous mountains. When it comes to fighting for honor, price doesn't matter. Berbeka returns to one of the most dangerous mountains in the world, Broad Peak on the Pakistan border (see Google Maps), to clear his name. Returning to the dangerous Karakoram mountain range comes with hard decisions that will forever change his life. Starring Ireneusz Czop as Maciej, Maja Ostaszewska, Dawid Ogrodnik, Marcin Czarnik, & Lukasz Simlat. I'm all in for this! Very strange choice of a pop song for the trailer,...

Ariztical has taken North American rights to “All Our Fears,” a gay drama based on the life of Polish artist Daniel Rycharski that won the top prize at last year’s Gdynia Film Festival. Variety has been given exclusive access to the film’s international trailer.

“All Our Fears” tells the story of Daniel (Dawid Ogrodnik), a young artist torn between his small village community, urban art galleries, the Catholic Church and his gay identity. When his lesbian friend (Agata Labno) commits suicide after suffering from homophobic heckling, Daniel’s life mission becomes the redemption of his community through a towering work of art. Meanwhile, he struggles not to lose Olek (Oskar Rybaczek), a local man he loves who isn’t able to embrace his sexuality.

The film is written and directed by Łukasz Ronduda and co-directed by Łukasz Gutt. It’s produced by Kuba Kosma, who collaborated with Ronduda...

Zdzisław Najmrodzki, who died in 1995, was one of the most infamous Polish criminals of the communist period. Called the “King of Thieves” and “Master of Escapes,” he evaded pursuit 29 times. Once, he jumped out of the window of a slow-moving train, claiming he saw a stork and felt the call of freedom. But Mateusz Rakowicz’s “The Getaway King,” which will be playing in the main competition at EnergaCamerimage Film Festival this week, isn’t sticking too close to the facts.

“As a historical figure, Najmrodzki is no hero,” says Dp Jacek Podgórski. “At that time, everyone was afraid of the militia, so escaping them 29 times was a feat. But it says more about them than it does about him. One time, he simply got them drunk. We expanded the myth and basically reinvented it.”

Podgórski used his father’s old photographs as a reference, deciding to incorporate their reddish tinge into the film.

A young man from Riga falls into a sinister situation to stay in Belgium in Juris Kursietis’s bleak social-realist film

Here is the second feature from Juris Kursietis, a Latvian film-maker working in a toughly questioning European social-realist style. Valentin Novopolskij plays Oleg, a young migrant worker from Riga working in a meat processing plant in Ghent, Belgium. A grisly accident means that he is danger of losing the job and getting deported, but poor, biddable Oleg falls under the sway of a sinister Polish gangmaster called Andrzej, who genially offers to get him a fake Polish passport and fix him up with cash-in-hand building work with all the other eastern European illegals . They are all living together, drinking and playing Fifa in a house that they are supposed to be remodelling – but the mercurial and voluble Andrzej is in fact terrorising them like an abusive stepfather and using them in violent crime.

Jakub Piątek’s ’Prime Time; won the Screen International Best Pitch award

Jakub Piątek’s feature debut Prime Time was the winner of the second annual Screen International Best Pitch award presented as part of this week’s Polish Film Days which ran as a virtual event from July 27-29.

Prime Time is based on the true story of a hostage-taking in a TV studio in front of live cameras. The screenplay is written by Piątek and Lukasz Czapski and was developed at Torino Film Lab Extended and New Horizons Studio+ last year.

The €1m project is a co-production between...

Agnieszka Holland’s film has won the top prize, while Icarus. The Legend of Mietek Kosz scooped the Silver Lions, and Corpus Christi snagged Best Director and Best Screenplay. Agnieszka Holland’s Mr. Jones, which follows a mission undertaken by journalist Gareth Jones, who first reported on the Holodomor, a hunger genocide engineered by Stalin in Ukraine, has taken home the main award, the Golden Lions, from the 44th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. The Polish-British-Ukrainian co-production also won the gong for Best Production Design (courtesy of Grzegorz Piątkowski). The Silver Lions went to Icarus. The Legend of Mietek Kosz by Maciej Pieprzyca. The film is a biopic of the relatively unknown titular Polish jazz musician and composer (a contemporary of Krzysztof Komeda’s), and also won the Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (The Last Family’s Dawid Ogrodnik), Best Cinematography (Witold Płóciennik), Best Costume...

“If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere,” said Theresa May near the beginning of her ill-fated premiership of the United Kingdom. An ugly, insular attempt to shame migrants and multinationals across the European Union, the term “citizen of nowhere” has since been claimed with defiant pride by many of its targets — yet its very coinage remains chilling, according subhuman status to those who must cross borders to make a living, or just to hold onto their lives. By turns despairing, exhilarating and acridly funny, Latvian director Juris Kursietis’ tremendous “Oleg” peers closely at the real, ragged soul within one such nowhere man: a young, debt-ridden Latvian butcher scraping by in Ghent, whose desperation to stay put lands him at the mercy of the Polish immigrant mafia, which is to say not much mercy at all.

As an unblinking study of contemporary...

The Efp (European Film Promotion) has named its ten best up and coming talents to be honoured as European Shooting Stars during the 69th Berlin International Film Festival in 2019.

In its 22nd year, the European Shooting Stars has taken the best from Europe in the industry who they deem are ready to step out onto the international film scene by a jury of industry experts.

Elliott Crosset Hove from Denmark swayed the jury with his “raw ability to shift from transparent vulnerability to intimidation” in Winter Brothers, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Locarno and Vilinus Film Festivals, and a Robert, the Danish Academy Award.

Also in the news – Jodie Foster to take the helm on English language remake of ‘Woman at War’

Rea Lest-Liik from Estonia impressed with her “fierceness, forcefulness and passion” depicted in November.

The youngest up-and-coming star is Emma Drogunova from Germany.

Film support agency European Film Promotion has selected this year’s ten European Shooting Stars, the emerging talent roster celebrated during the Berlin Film Festival. Making the grade were Elliott Crosset Hove from Denmark, star of Winter Brothers; Estonian actress Lest-Liik, star of feature November; Emma Drogunova from Germany, star of The Tobacconist; and Kristín Thora

Haraldsdóttir from Iceland, star of And Breathe Normally. Also chosen were Aisling Franciosi from Ireland, whose credits include Games Of Thrones and The Nightingale; Macedonian actor Blagoj Veselinov of Secret Ingredient; Dawid Ogrodnik from Poland, star of Silent Night; Norwegian actress Ine Marie Wilmann, known for Sonja: The White Swan; Serbian actor Milan Marić from Dovlatov, which screened this year in competition in Berlin; and The

Charmer star Ardalan Esmaili from Sweden. Previous Shooting Stars include Alicia Vikander, Matthias Schoenaerts, Domhnall Gleeson and Baltasar Kormákur. The 2019 jury included U.S. casting director Avy Kaufman,...

Aisling Franciosi (“The Nightingale”), Ardalan Esmaili (“The Charmer”) and Elliott Crosset Hove (“Winter Brothers”) are among the 10 actors and actresses who have been named as the European Film Promotion’s Shooting Stars.

Previous Shooting Stars include Alicia Vikander, Matthias Schoenaerts, Pilou Asbæk and Baltasar Kormákur. The new crop of up-and-coming talent for the 22nd edition of the program will be honored during the upcoming Berlin Film Festival.

Crosset Hove from Denmark won the best actor award at Locarno and a Robert prize (Denmark’s equivalent of the Oscars) for his performance in Hlynur Palmason’s “Winter Brothers.” The jury praised the actor for his “raw ability to shift from transparent vulnerability to intimidation.”

Franciosi, an Italian-born Irish actress, has been acclaimed for her performance in Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale,” which won two nods at the Venice Film Festival, including the Special Jury Prize. The jury said Franciosi, whose other...

European Shooting Stars, the annual selection of 10 young acting talents to watch from Europe, has unveiled its 2019 crop.

Organizers European Film Promotion presented the list of new up-and-coming talents — five actors and five actresses from across the continent — that it will introduce to the international film industry in a series of meetings with agents and producers at next year's Berlin International Film Festival between Feb.8-11, 2019.

The 22nd Shooting Stars, picked by a jury of film professionals, include just two talents from Europe's bigger nations — Polish actor Dawid Ogrodnik (Silent Night) ...

European Shooting Stars, the annual selection of 10 young acting talents to watch from Europe, has unveiled its 2019 crop.

Organizers European Film Promotion presented the list of new up-and-coming talents — five actors and five actresses from across the continent — that it will introduce to the international film industry in a series of meetings with agents and producers at next year's Berlin International Film Festival between Feb.8-11, 2019.

The 22nd Shooting Stars, picked by a jury of film professionals, include just two talents from Europe's bigger nations — Polish actor Dawid Ogrodnik (Silent Night) ...

Cicha noc (Silent Night) by Piotr Domalewski was awarded as the year's best film at the Polish Eagles, the local equivalent of the Oscars, at a ceremony in Warsaw on Monday.

The dramedy, centered on the main character Adam's secret visit to his family home at Christmas after years of working abroad, swept 11 nominations and ended up with nine statuettes.

First-time feature director Domalewski collected the best director and best script awards, as well as the Discovery of the Year prize.

The movie's male lead, Dawid Ogrodnik, picked up the best actor trophy, and Agnieszka Suchora and Akadiusz Jakubik...

New projects revealed, including thriller described as “David Lynch meets Ken Loach”.

New films by internationally feted Polish filmmakers Jan Komasa, Kuba Czekaj and Dorota Kedzierzawska were among 20 projects presented to sales agents, distributors and festival programmers at the sixth edition of the Polish Days (8-10 August) during this week’s New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw.

Komasa - who made his feature debut with Suicide Room - and his producer Leszek Bodzak of Aurum Film (The Last Family) pitched the contemporary social drama Corpus Christi which is based on screenwriter Mateusz Pacewicz’s first screenplay for cinema.

The €1m project is being structured as a Polish-French co-production and will begin principal photography in spring 2018.

Bodzak also presented a second feature project, Borys Lankosz’s thriller Dark, Almost Night, which he described as “David Lynch meets Ken Loach”, to begin shooting this autumn with The Last Family’s Dawid Ogrodnik and Aleksandra Konieczna in the cast...

Festival’s industry strand crowns work-in-progress winners from Macedonia and Ukraine.

The Grand Prix of FilmFestival Cottbus (8-13 November) went to Russia for the fourth time in the last six years, with filmmaker Ivan I. Tverdovsky taking the top award for his second feature Zoology after also winning top honours for his debut Corrections Class in 2014.

The other previous winners from Russia had been Angelina Nikonova in 2011 with Twilight Portrait and Alexander Veledinsky in 2013 with The Geographer Who Drank His Globe Away.

Moreover, Tverdovsky is the third film-maker to win Cottbus’s top prize twice in the festival’s 26-year history following Slovakia’s Martin Sulik (1993: Everything I Like and 1995: The Garden) and Serbia’s Oleg Novkovic (2006: Tomorrow Morning and 2010: White White World).

The international jury, which included veteran Israeli producer Marek Rosenbaum and Serbian actress-director Mirjana Karanovic, described Zoology as ¨an original and emotional story about loneliness, love, hope and...

Locarno premiere took home eight awards; meanwhile Ukraine greenlights cash rebate scheme.

Jan P. Matuszynski’s feature debut The Last Family swept the board at this year’s Gdynia Film Festival in Poland (19-24 September) with eight awards, including the Golden Lions Grand Prix as well as the awards for Best Actor and Actress and the Audience Award.

The tragicomic story also picked up the Journalists Award, the Onetu Award for the three lead actors Aleksandra Konieczna, Andrzej Seweryn and Dawid Ogrodnik, as well as the Elle Crystal Star and the Golden Kangaroo for director Matuszynski.

Handled internationally by New Europe Film Sales and distributed theatrically in Poland by Kino Swiat, The Last Family had its world premiere in competition at last month’s Locarno Film Festival where the Leopard for Best Actor was awarded to star Andrzej Seweryn for his performance.

Tomasz Wasilewski’s Berlinale competition title United States Of Love - also with New Film...

A lot can happen in eleven minutes. It can mean the difference between sleeping in and missing your bus to work. You could use that time to listen to Led Zeppelin's "In My Time Of Dying." It's also the length of time that could lead you to overcooking your pasta. But for director Jerzy Skolimowski, "11 Minutes" is the framework of his upcoming movie. Starring Richard Dormer, Paulina Chapko, Wojciech Mecwaldowski, Dawid Ogrodnik, and Andrzej Chyra, the movie presents its slices of narrative in eleven-minute segments, all of them overlapping and interlocking in a town square in Warsaw. Here's the synopsis: In the span of eleven tense minutes, a whirlwind of interlocking tales of life in the surveillance age unfold in this stylish, propulsive thriller from acclaimed director Jerzy Skolimowski (Deep End, Essential Killing). In a city square in Warsaw, a sleazy film director “auditions” a married actress in a...

Exclusive: The distributor has struck a North American deal with HanWay Films on Poland’s best foreign language Oscar submission.

Jerzy Skolimowski wrote and directed 11 Minutes, which premiered in Venice and earned a special mention in the Vittorio Veneto Film Festival Award.

The film follows a motley crew of people whose fates are decided after a short, mysterious interview.

The characters include a jealous husband, his sexy actress wife, a sleazy Hollywood director, a drug messenger, a disoriented young woman, an ex-con hot dog vendor, a troubled student, a high-rise window cleaner, an elderly sketch artist, a team of paramedics and a group of hungry nuns.

The cast includes Richard Dormer, Wojciech Mecwaldowski, Andrzej Chyra, Dawid Ogrodnik and Paulina Chapko.

Ewa Piaskowska produced with Skolimowski and Jeremy Thomas served as executive producer alongside Andrew Lowe, Ed Guiney, Eileen Tasca and Marek Zydowicz.

11 Minutes received its North American Premiere in Toronto.

Sundance Selects will release...

Need proof that a lot can happen in a short amount of time? Well the teaser for Polish film 11 Minutes certainly serves as that proof. Writer/director Jerzy Skolimowski (Essential Killing) is making the festival rounds this year with his new film that stars Richard Dormer, Andrzej Chyra, Wojciech Mecwaldowski, Dawid Ogrodnik and Paulina Chapko. Here’s the synopsis:

A jealous husband out of control, his sexy actress wife, a sleazy Hollywood director, a reckless drug messenger, a disoriented young woman, an ex-con hot dog vendor, a troubled student on a mysterious mission, a high-rise window cleaner on an illicit break, an elderly sketch artist, a hectic paramedics team and a group of hungry nuns. A cross-section of contemporary urbanites whose lives and loves intertwine. They live in an unsure world where anything could happen at any time. An unexpected chain of events can seal many fates in a mere 11 minutes.

Jerzy Skolimowski knows how to rattle an audience. He's the co-writer behind Roman Polanski's "Knife In The Water," his last feature "Essential Killing" cast Vincent Gallo as an Afghan Pow, and now he's back on the festival circuit with "11 Minutes." And it looks like one that you can only dare to ignore. Starring Richard Dormer, Wojciech Mecwaldowski, Andrzej Chyra, Dawid Ogrodnik, and Paulina Chapko captures various slices of life in Warsaw all in eleven minute fragments, with everything pulling together for a grand finale. Sounds like a one that will be a lot of fun to see how it's pulled off. Here's the official synopsis:  After a seventeen-year break from filmmaking in the 1990s and 2000s, one of the major figures of Polish cinema returned to his native country and emerged with 2008's wonderful Four Nights with Anna, heralding the resurrection of a protean artist. Firmly ensconced back in Poland,...

11 Minutes

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski // Writer: Jerzy Skolimowski

Esteemed Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski began his directorial career in the late 60′s, but gained international acclaim outside of his native film system, dipping into the French/Belgian production of The Departure (1967), headlined by Jean-Pierre Leaud (and winning the director the Golden Berlin Bear), before helming a trio of infamous UK productions starting with 1970′s iconic Deep End, an adaptation of Nabokov’s King, Queen, Knave (1972) and the mystical genre film The Shout (1978) featuring Alan Bates and John Hurt. Skolimowski would compete at Cannes five times, winning the Grand Jury prize twice, for The Shout and 1982′s Moonlighting. And then three rounds in Venice would nab him two more Jury Prizes, for The Lightship (1985) and Essential Killing (2010). Skolimowski was assumed to have retired after a hiatus dating from 1991′s 30 Door Key, but broke his silence with 2008′s Four Nights With Anna, followed by Essential Killing,...

Golden Globes are considering “Ida” directed and co-written by Pawel Pawlikowski (“Last Resort", “My Summer of Love"), a moving and intimate drama about a young novitiate nun in 1960's Poland who, on the verge of taking her vows, discovers a dark family secret dating from the terrible years of the Nazi occupation. The film premiered at the 2013 Telluride Film Festival and was also featured at the 2013 Toronto and 2014 Sundance film festivals.

“Ida” won the 2014 European Film Awards for Best European Film, Best European Director, Best European Screenwriter, Best European Cinematographer and the People’s Choice Award. The film was named the Best Foreign Language Film by the New York Film Critics Circle and won the 2014 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards for Best Supporting Actress (Agata Kulesza) and Best Foreign Language Film. "Ida" is also nominated for the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Award for Best International Film. It's also the Polish Oscar® entry and has made the 9-film shortlist.

Below is my interview with director Pawel Pawlikowski published last year prior to the film theatrical release:

I happen to love Jewish films and so when I saw "Ida" was playing in Toronto, it was first on my list of “must-sees”. However, I am no longer an “acquisitions” person, nor am I a film reviewer. My work keeps me out of the screening room because we work with filmmakers looking to get their films into the hands of those who will show their films. In other words, we advise and strategize for getting new films into the film circuit’s festivals, distributors' and international sales agents’ hands.

So I missed Ida at its Tiff debut. In Cartagena, where I was invited to cover the festival for SydneysBuzz and where I was gathering information for the book I have just completed on Iberoamerican Film Financing, it showed again in the jewel-box of a theater in this jewel-box of a city. But when I saw the first shots – and fell in love with it – I also saw it was subtitled in Spanish and rather than strain over translating, I left the theater. Later on, Pawel Pawlikowski and I sat next to each other at a fabulous dinner in one of Cartagena’s many outdoor squares, and we discussed the title of my book rather than his films which was a big loss on one hand but a big gain for me on the other because we got to speak as “civilians” rather than keeping the conversation on a “professional” level.

Read More: Review 'Ida' by Carlos Aguilar

Now Music Box is opening Ida in L.A. on May 2, 2014 at the Laemmle in L.A. and in N.Y. and I made sure to take advantage of my press status, not only to see the film but to interview Pawel on himself and the film.

There were two ways to look at this film: as a conceit, as in, “what a great story – a girl about to take her vows in the convent which raised her discovers she is Jewish and returns to the society which destroyed her family” -- or as a journey of a fresh soul into the heart of humanity and finds that she is blessed by being able to decide upon her own destiny within it.

Parenthetically, this seems to me to be a companion piece to the Berlinale film "Stations of the Cross", another journey of a fresh soul into the spiritual life of religion as she struggles in the society which formed her.

And so I began my interview with Pawel:

I could look at this film in two ways, I’ve heard the audiences talk about whether the film is Anti-Polish or Anti-Semitic, but that is not my concern, I want to know if it is just a great story or does it go deeper than that?

Pawel immediately responded, I Think he said, “I am not a professional filmmaker, and I do not make a ‘certain type of film’. I make films depending on where I am in life. A film about exile, a film about first love. Films mark where I am in my life.

In the '60s, when I was a kid and first saw the world this was how I depicted it in this film…seeing the world for the first time…life is a journey and filmmaking marks where you (the audience) are in life and it marks where I am in life. Each film is different as a result.

After making "Woman on the 5th," about the hero’s (in my own head) being lost in Paris, a weird sort of production – directed by a Polish director with a British and an American actor and actress, I craved solid ground, a familiar place or a “return” to important things of the past, and I returned to a certain period in Poland which I found very much alive, for myself then and again as I made this movie and in Polish history itself.

Ida takes place 17 years after the war and shortly after after Stalin’s crimes were being made public by Krushchev. The Totalitarian State of Poland bent a bit; censorship was lifted a bit and a new culture was developing. Music was jazz and rock and roll. Poland was very alive then: the spirit of going your own way, not caring what anyone thinks, creating a style in cinema, in art, music...

I myself was a young boy in the '60s and I left Poland in '71 when I was 13 to stay with my mother in England where she had married a Brit. My father lived in the West; they were divorced and I went for a holiday and stayed.

I went to school in the U.K. but at 13, I was thrown out and I went to Germany where my father lived and matriculated there. I couldn’t go back to Poland as I had left illegally and was only allowed back in to visit in the late '70s. I returned in 1980 during Solidarity and from 1989 to the fall of the Wall, I went back often.

Ida is a film about identity, family, faith, guilt, socialism and music. I wanted to make a film about history that wouldnʼt feel like a historical film— a film that is moral, but has no lessons to offer. I wanted to tell a story in which ʻeveryone has their reasonsʼ; a story closer to poetry than plot. Most of all, I wanted to steer clear of the usual rhetoric of the Polish cinema. The Poland in "Ida" is shown by an ʻoutsiderʼ with no ax to grind, filtered through personal memory and emotion, the sounds and images of childhood…

I read you are going to make another film about Poland…

It is not about Poland but it is set in Poland. I am working on three projects, which is how I work. I keep writing and find one of them has the legs to carry me…which one is not yet known.

You mentioned in an interview with Sight and Sound your top 10 films…

Yes, which ones did you like? They ask me this every year and every year the list changes for me. There are other good ones, like Once Upon a Time in Anatolia…they are not all the old classics and they are not necessarily my favorites or what I think are “the best”. Again they depend on where I am in my own life.

The ones I like on your list were Ashes and Diamonds which I saw in New York in my freshman year in college, "La Dolce Vita" …"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Some Like It Hot."

I actually think "8 ½" is more remarkable than "La Dolce Vita." I also like "Loves of a Blonde" very much….

I found "Ashes and Diamonds" so extraordinary, I then had to see the actor in "Man of Marble" which took me to the next "Man of Steel" and Man of…whatever... until I thought I knew Wadja. What did you make of this film?

I saw it later as I was too young when it came out in the '60s. I saw it in the '70s when it was already a classic. Its impact on me was that it was well-done and about something. It is a comment about a man who decides whether to fight or to live. It could be remade in any country coming out of civil war.

To return to Ida, I noticed stylistic choices you made that I would like you to comment on.

The landscapes and interiors were very large and sparse. Interiors always had someone in the back ground moving, arranging or walking by in silence.

Yes there is always some life and the movements of people in the background are like music in the film, though it is not really music…

Yes, the music in the film is great. The magnificence of the classical music someone is playing, like the aunt…

Yes I only want to use real music at times that real music is part of the story. I didn’t want film music. I wanted it to come out of silence. It is part of the scene like the background movement of people. Each piece means something. The pop songs were key from the start. They were fatally imprinted on my childhood memory. They really color the landscape. Coltrane and stuff came from my adult self.

Incidentally, the late '50s and early '60s were great for jazz in Poland. There was a real explosion: Komeda, Namyslowski, Stanko, Wroblewski... Apart from telling Idaʼs story, I wanted to conjure up a certain image of Poland, an image that I hold dear. My country may have been grey, oppressive and enslaved in the early '60s, but in some ways it was 'cooler' and more original than the Poland of today, and somehow more universally resonant.

Iʼm sure that lots of Poles with a chip on their shoulder, and there are many, will fail to notice the beauty, the love that went into our film—and will accuse me of damaging Poland's image by focusing on the melancholy, the provincial, the grotesque… And then there's the matter of a Polish farmer killing a Jewish family… thereʼs bound to be trouble. On the other hand, thereʼs also a Stalinist state prosecutor of Jewish origins, which might land me in hot water in other quarters. Still, I hope the film is sufficiently specific and un-rhetorical enough to be understood on its own terms.

The music Ida’s aunt was playing before she…what are your thoughts about her aunt?

Neither Ida nor her aunt is typical. Wanda’s imprimatur is that she has no self-pity, no regrets, no sentimentality.

She had fought in the resistance rather than raise a family. She had been a super idealistic Marxist, became a part of the New Establishment and got drawn into the games and hypocrisy, sending people to death for “impeding progress”.

She reminds me of my father in some ways. Her acerbic sense of humor. I gave her some of my father’s lines.

Where Did The Character Of Wanda Come From?

When I was doing my post-graduate degree at Oxford in the early '80s I befriended Professor Brus, a genial economist and reformist Marxist who left Poland in ʻ68. I was particularly fond of his wife Helena, who smoked, drank, joked and told great stories. She didn't suffer fools gladly, but she struck me as a warm and generous woman. I lost touch with the Bruses when I left Oxford, but some 10 years later I heard on BBC News that the Polish government was requesting the extradition of one Helena Brus-Wolinska, resident in Oxford, on the grounds of crimes against humanity. It turned out that the charming old lady had been a Stalinist prosecutor in her late twenties. Among other things, she engineered the death in a show trial of a completely innocent man and a real hero of the Resistance, General ‘Nil’ Fieldorf. It was a bit of a shock. I couldn't square the warm, ironic woman I knew with the ruthless fanatic and Stalinist hangman. This paradox has haunted me for years. I even tried to write a film about her, but couldnʼt get my head around or into someone so contradictory. Putting her into Idaʼs story helped bring that character to life. Conversely, putting the ex-believer with blood on her hands next to Ida helped me define the character and the journey of the young nun.

By 1956, illusions about society were gone. Stalin’s crimes were revealed in 1961, there was a change of government, a new generation was coming of age. Wanda was a judge they called “Red Wanda” and had sent enemies of the state to their deaths. The older generation was left high and dry. Communism had become a shabby reality. Her despair was apparent– she had been heroic and now the system was a joke.

And then some creature from the past pops up and makes her reveal all she had swept under the carpet. She drank too much, there was no love in her life, only casual sex. But still she was straight-ahead, directed and unstoppable.

And then after the revelations of what had become of their parents and her child, her sister returns to the convent. There is nowhere for her to go. She hits a wall. She is heroic and there is no place for her in society anymore.

And Ida? Why did you choose such a person?

Ida has multiple origins, the most interesting ones probably not quite conscious. Let's say that I come from a family full of mysteries and contradictions and have lived in one sort of exile or another for most of my life. Questions of identity, family, blood, faith, belonging, and history have always been present.

I'd been playing for years with the story of a Catholic nun who discovers sheʼs Jewish. I originally set it in ʻ68, the year of student protests and the Communist Party sponsored anti-Semitic purges in Poland. The story involved a nun a bit older than Ida, as well as an embattled bishop and a state security officer, and the whole thing was more steeped in the politics of the day. The script was turning out a little too schematic, thriller-ish and plotty for my liking, so I put Ida aside for a while and went to Paris to make The Woman In The Fifth . I was in a different place at the time.

When I came back to Ida, I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted the film to be. My cowriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz and I stripped the whole thing down, made it less plotty, the characters richer and less functional. Ida became younger, more inexperienced, more of a blank slate, a young girl on the brink of life. Also we moved the story to ʻ62, a more nondescript period in Poland, but also a time of which I have most vivid memories, my own impressions as a child - unaware of what was going on in the adult world, but all the more sensitive to images and sounds. Some shots in the film couldʼve come from my family album.

In the course of the film, Ida undergoes a change. She becomes energized. When she returns to the convent you can see it in her body movements. It is the only time we used a hand-held camera to depict the new energy she has acquired. She is going into the spiritual in a different way. The old way elicited a giggle from her; she had seen the sensuality of the novice nun bathing…whether she is returning to the convent to stay is left to the viewer to decide.

The viewer is brought into a space of associations they make on their own, the film is more like poetry where the feeling of the viewer is the private one of the viewer, not one the film imposes.

Yes, each woman enters a new reality and comes out changed, and I was left thinking there was nothing better of the two life choices, the “normal” life of love and family and the “spiritual” life of simple living and silent devotion. There needs to be some balance between the two, but what is that? I still don’t know.

On a last note: I noticed in the end credits you thanked Alfonso Cuarón. Why was that?

Yes he liked the film a lot. There were many people I thanked, like Agnieszka Holland. These are friends I can show my work to. They protect me against critics and festivals. This group of friends can also be nasty, but they are honest friends.

Thank you so much Pawel for your insights. I look forward to meeting you again “on the circuit”.

To my readers, here are the nuts and bolts of the film:

Music Box Films is the proud U.S. distributor of "Ida," the award-winning film written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Ida world premiered at Telluride 2013 and Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Fipresci Award for Best Film; then played the London Film Festival where it won Best Film, and was the Grand Prix winner at the Warsaw Film Festival. It played as an Official Selection in the 2014 Sundance and New York Jewish Film Festivals.

Poland 1962. Anna (newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska) is a beautiful eighteen-year-old woman, preparing to become a nun at the convent where she has lived since orphaned as a child. She learns she has a living relative she must visit before taking her vows, her mother’s sister Wanda. Her aunt, she learns, is not only a former hard-line Communist state prosecutor notorious for sentencing priests and others to death, but also a Jew. Anna learns from her aunt that she too is Jewish - and that her real name is Ida. This revelation sets Anna, now Ida, on a journey to uncover her roots and confront the truth about her family. Together, the two women embark on a voyage of discovery of each other and their past. Ida has to choose between her birth identity and the religion that saved her from the massacres of the Nazi occupation of Poland. And Wanda must confront decisions she made during the War when she chose loyalty to the cause before family.

Following his breakthrough films "Last Resort" and BAFTA-award winning "My Summer of Love," "Ida" marks Polish-born, British writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski's first film set in his homeland. Ida stars Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza. It will open in Los Angeles on May 2 at the Laemmle's Royal. (Music Box Films, 80 minutes, unrated).

Its international producers, Eric Abraham (Portobello Pictures), Ewa Puszczynska (Opus Film), Piotr Dzieciol (Opus Film) and coproducer, Christian Falkenberg Husum of Denmark sold about 30 territories in Toronto and to date it has sold to 43 territories where the film has opened.

Argentina - Cdi Films, Australia - Curious Film, Austria - Polyfilm is still playing it and to date it has grossed Us$10,733. Benelux – Cineart where it is also still playing and has grossed Us$185,026 in Belgium and Us$131,247 in The Netherlands, Canada – Eyesteelfilm and Films We Like, Czech Republic – Aerofilms, Denmark - Camera Film, Denmark - Portobello Film Sales, France - Memento Films Distribution where in three weeks it grossed $3,192,706, Germany - Arsenal and Maxmedien where it grossed $24,010, Greece - Strada Films, Hungary - Mozinet Ltd., Israel - Lev Films (Shani Films), Italy - Parthenos where it grossed $681,460., Norway – Arthaus grossed $59,920, Poland – Soloban where it grossed $333,714, Portugal - Midas Filmes, Spain - Caramel Films is still playing it and to date it has grossed $408,085, Sweden - Folkets Bio, Switzerland - Frenetic, Taiwan - Andrews Film Co. Ltd, U.K. - Artificial Eye and Curzon, U.S. – Music Box and Film Forum.

Production

(Poland) An Opus Film, Phoenix Film production in association with Portobello Pictures in coproduction with Canal Plus Poland, Phoenix Film Poland. (International sales: Fandango Portobello, Copenhagen.) Produced by Eric Abraham, Piotr Dzieciol, Ewa Puszczynska. Coproducer, Christian Falkenberg Husum.

Crew

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Screenplay, Pawlikowski, Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Camera (B&W), Lukasz Zal, Ryszard Lenczewski; editor, Jaroslaw Kaminski; production designers, Katarzyna Sobanska, Marcel Slawinski; costume designer, Aleksandra Staszko; Kristian Selin Eidnes Andersen; supervising sound editor, Claus Lynge; re-recording mixers, Lynge, Andreas Kongsgaard; visual effects, Stage 2; line producer, Magdalena Malisz; associate producer, Sofie Wanting Hassing.

With

Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik, Joanna Kulig.

Titli took home the international jury prize at Gijon International Film Festival Indian film Titli (Butterfly), directed by Kanu Behl, took the international jury prize for best feature film at the 52nd Gijón International Film Festival this weekend.

The film - which tells the story of Titli, a young man who longs to escape his family's life of crime - also saw Shivani Raghuvanshipor take home the best actress prize for her role as Titli's wife through arranged marriage, Neelu, who is also dreaming of freedom.

The best director and writer's prizes when to Iranian director Nima Javidi for Melbourne, which sees a couple faced with a moral dilemma on the day they are due to leave the country for a new life.

Polish drama Life Feels Good - based on the true story of a man suffering from cerebral palsy - saw Dawid Ogrodnik named best actor for...

Ida director Pawel Pawlikowski on Jean-Luc Godard: "Some of the freedom I took with the continuity, which is trying to shoot the film in tableaux…" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard hosted a reception and screening at the Crosby Street Hotel in New York of Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida, which stars Agata Trzebuchowska, Agata Kulesza and Dawid Ogrodnik. As Jake Gyllenhaal scrambled off, I spoke with Pawel about the freedom Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie, starring Anna Karina, gave him; Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue; Odysseus; Milos Forman's Loves Of A Blonde and Fireman's Ball; fairytales with Jean-Pierre Dardenne; Luc Dardenne and Yoko Ono; Paul Celan's Fugue Of Death, until we ended with the tale of Winnie the Pooh.

Ida is the funereal journey of two women, told in stark black and white tableaux, set in 1960s Poland. Anna, brought up in a convent...

Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza in Ida Photo: Music Box Films The fourth edition of the Play Poland touring festival kicks off on Thursday, October 9.

The festival - which will visit Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Birmingham, Sunderland, Belfast and Aberfeldy - will celebrate the best of recent Polish cinema as well as hosting art exhibitions and short film showcases. Internationally, the festival also has a presence in Ottawa, New York and Oslo.

Among this year's feature films are Pawel Pawlikowski's multi-award winning Ida, about an orphaned novice nun who discovers a living relative and travels into her family's past. Other highlights include Life Feels Good (Chce sie zyc), Maciej Pieprzyca's retelling of the remarkable true story of a boy's struggle to communicate with others after being born with cerebral palsy. Featuring a standout performance from Dawid Ogrodnik as the central character Mateusz, Pieprzyca brings a clear-eyed intelligence to a...

Lukasz Palkowski’s Gods was the big winner at this year’s annual showcase of Polish cinema at the Gdynia Film Festival which ended with a gala awards ceremony at the weekend.

Gods (Bogowie), based on the life of Zbigniew Religa who performed the first successful heart transplant in Poland in the 1980s, received the Grand Prix Golden Lions for best film as well as individual awards in the categories of screenplay, make-up, production design and actor in a leading role for Tomasz Kot.

In addition, Gods received the award of the Polish Film Festivals and Reviews Abroad as well as the Journalists’ Award, Elle magazine’s Star of the Stars award for lead actor Kot and Radio Gdansk’s Golden Claquer Award for the longest applauded film at a screening in the Musical Theatre for the Main Competition.

Palkowski made his feature directorial debut in 2007 with Reserve, which won three prize at the festival in Gdynia...

Ida Music Box Films Reviewed for Shockya by Harvey Karten. Data-based on Rotten Tomatoes Grade: B Director: Pawel Pawlikowski Screenplay: Pawel Pawlikowski, Rebecca Lenkiewicz Cast: Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik, Joanna Kulig Screened at: Critics’ Link, NYC, 8/2/14 Opens: September 9, 2014 on DVD and Blu-ray and VOD. Theatrical opening May 2, 2014. Director Pawel Pawlikowski, is known to cineastes largely for his passionate “My Summer of Love,” which charts a meeting between women with opposite predilections; one a tomboy looking for an alternative to the emptiness of life, the other cynical, spoiled and well-educated. You can see that “Ida” is right up the director’s alley as now he [ Read More ]

The post Ida Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Richard Linklater’s Boyhood took three top awards at the 40th Seattle International Film Festival, including the prizes for best film, best director and best actress for Patricia Arquette. The award for best actor went to Dawid Ogrodnik for the Polish film Life Feels Good. The festival’s Golden Space Needle and Competition Awards were presented at a ceremony and brunch held at the Space Needle on Sunday. Film Review: 'Boyhood' "This has been an extraordinary 40th anniversary festival. From welcoming back Richard Linklater to Seattle with his groundbreaking epic Boyhood, to honoring Laura Dern, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Quincy Jones for their masterful

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Richard Linklater’s acclaimed family portrait won the Golden Space Needle Award for best film and best director honours as the 40th Seattle International Film Festival came to a conclusion on Sunday (June 8).

The corresponding documentary honour went to Keep On Keepin’ On by Alan Hicks, while Dawid Ogrodnik was named best actor for Life Feels Good and Patricia Arquette best actress for Boyhood.

Best short film went to Cody Blue Snider’s Fool’s Day and the Lena Sharpe Award For Persistence Of Vision prize went to Bound: Africans Versus African Americans by Peres Owino.

In the competition awards, Carlos Marques-Marcet earned the Siff 2014 Best New Director Grand Jury Prize for 10,000Km, while the documentary prize went to Marmato, directed by Mark Grieco.

“This has been an extraordinary 40th anniversary festival,” said artistic director Carl Spence. “From welcoming back Richard Linklater to Seattle with his groundbreaking epic Boyhood, to honouring Laura Dern, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Quincy Jones...

BAFTA Award-winning Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski made an astonishing pair of films in the first half of the last decade, with Last Resort and My Summer of Love. After a fairly quiet period he has returned with Ida, a poignant tale of a young nun in 1960s communist Poland trying to make sense of an unfamiliar world, which had taken the top prize at the London Film Festival. Beautifully shot in a stark monochrome, Ida is a sometimes difficult, understated gem of a movie that gives its audience much to think about during its brief, 80 minute running time.

Agata Trzebuchowska plays Anna, a novice nun with little experience of the world outside the very basic convent she has grown up in since being left there as a baby. As it turns out, Anna has a surviving relative, her aunt Wanda Gruz (Agata Kulesza), who she is encouraged to get in contact with.

Ida

Written by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and Pawel Pawlikowski

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski

Poland/Denmark, 2013

UK-based filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski returns to the country of his birth with a film that explores the persistence of the war in 1960s Poland. Shot in Academy ratio and soft black and white, the cinematography by Ryszard Lenczewski and Lukasz Zal is beautiful, capturing the stark landscapes and emotional weight of the historical period. The setting and subject matter seem to give Pawlikowski renewed impetus at an important stage in his career and the result is a measured, sombre film that succeeds in evoking the intricate world of its central figures.

Ida tells the story of the title character (Agata Trzebuchowska), an orphaned nun who is preparing to take her vows. Before she is allowed to do so, she is told to leave the convent and visit her only living relative, her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza...

The Sundance Institute has released the movie line-up for their Spotlight, Midnight and Sundance Kids selections for The Sundance Film Festival 2014. The Midnight selection has always been my favorite because its always packed with really crazy, fun, and messed up films. It looks like another great collection of films this next year! They include films such as Cooties with Elijah Wood, Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead and more. Sundance Kids is a new addition this year which, if you couldn't tell, is meant for younger audiences.

The Festival takes place January 16-26 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden, and Sundance, Utah, and we will be there to cover as many of the films as humanly possible. Director of Programming, Trevor Groth, had this to say in a statement.

“The films in the sections announced today round out our 2014 Sundance Film Festival program and further reflect the depth and...

Sundance’s Spotlight section works as a sampling of quality items that dug their knees in the sand of the Croisette, or hit the asphalt payment in Toronto. It’s an acknowledgment of U.S film distributors (in this case: Radius-twc, Magnolia, Music Box Films, A24, Sony Pictures Classics, Strand Releasing) who’ve all contributed to my favorite disease – one that is called cinephilia. It’s also a look into 2014 – which is when they’ll be unveiled theatrically. And finally, it’s a way in which to receive the extended Sundance family once again such as Richard Ayoade (preemed his debut feautre here – Submarine) and Jeremy Saulnier (was at the fest as a cinematographer for Matthew Porterfield’s I Used to Be Darker). Here are the eight selections:

Blue Ruin / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Jeremy Saulnier) — A mysterious outsider’s quiet life turns upside down when he returns...

When Sundance announced the films in competition for the 2014 festival yesterday, its organizers noted that they were impressed by the caliber of cinematic artistry — mostly due to technology — that freed up filmmakers to experiment with different genres. No category of the festival is more rooted in genre than Park City at Midnight, the late-night section that specializes in horror and the supernatural, and this year’s slate has several potential breakouts. “The Midnight lineup came together in a way that is about the strongest group we’ve ever had, top to bottom,” says Trevor Groth, Sundance’s director of programming.

Tommy Wirkola’s Dead Snow sequel, Adam Wingard’s The Guest and Xyz Films’ Killers from The Mo Brothers are among the Park City At Midnight line-up as festival heads also unveiled Spotlight selections and the inaugural Sundance Kids section on December 5.

The Sundance Kids strand is programmed in cooperation with Utah children and youth festival Tumbleweeds, and will premiere Ernest And Celestine starring Forest Whitaker and Lauren Bacall and Zip & Zap And The Marble Gang with Javier Gutiérrez.

“The films in the sections announced today round out our 2014 Sundance Film Festival programme and further reflect the depth and diversity of modern independent film-making that will satisfy everyone from festival fledglings to fanatics,” said director of programming Trevor Groth.

The Sundance Film Festival is set to run from January 16-26 2014 in Utah. Organisers will showcase 117 feature selections, of which 96 are world premieres, representing 37 countries and 53 first-time film-makers, including 34 in competition.

The selections...