KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL 2026

HUMAN RACE

Watchable. This full-length Danish documentary feels lengthy because it consists of talking heads and, whereas it tells of the scientific world thoroughly: international rivalry, financing, obtaining permits, developing technology to automise the procedures, it's constantly different people talking or passages where nothing happens. Action, like the extraction process, apart from the show of the machinery, is missing. And the whole Scandinavian region looks gloomy. If schizophrenia is the flip side of creativity and autism of intelligence, they inhabitants may be autistic but not schizophrenic. Still, the film is informative in terms of what the research of 5000 ancient human DNA samples was about and how genetics can affect politics. You also learn that mental diseases have been around forever. 

Reviewed from the organizers' screener, cinematic reception might differ.

THE WRONG GIRLS

Watchable. How come that after "Twilight" Robert Pattinson has developed professionally and become a coveted actor whereas Kristen Stewart hasn't had even one decent role or movie since? And how come two women: Dylan Meyer and said Kristen Stewart wrote this movie? Never have I encountered women as dumb as the protagonists. I'm happy I could pause and actually read Dave Barrad's business card: "Takes care of business. Disguises, getaways, karate, negotiations, hand-offs. You commit the crime, I take care of the rest" - the best bit in the movie but only if you can keep up reading it in a flash. At some point you hear dreadful screaming coming from a room in a shady lab which turns out to be the doc screaming because she had hit her toe - another fun idea but lost the abyss of nonsense.

Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.

KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL 2026

OSTATNIE PRZYGOTOWANIA KROLIKA FRANIA (FRANKIE THE RABBIT'S FINAL PREPARATIONS)

Recommended. 3 minutes 10 seconds of playing with your presumptions. This Polish doll animation tells of preparations which insinuate a suicide but... the tale is touching.

PLAVUTARJI (FIN PEOPLE)

Recommended three times. This just below 10 minutes Slovenian animation is one I actually immediately had to see again. And then again. At the first time I admired the world creation: people coexisting with mermen and mermaids and the city sinking gradually but steadily. It was only at the second viewing that I caught all the details, like the wife's hand gestures and feet movements as well as the men's predicament: what is a shoe repairer to do in a world where people no longer have feet? In this tale love prevails. It's a beautiful story of relationship compromises, of social divisions, of the changing world of work, of finding both joy in and solutions for the new reality. And the couple's dog wonderfully completes the family. At the third time I realised it was jumping into the water that changed the people, made sure who was who and learnt the couple's back story - all essential elements to comprehend this seemingly simple yet multi-layered and deep (pun intended) film. Oscar-worthy.

MLYNKI (FRIGHTS FROM THE MILLS)

Recommended. This 17-minute Polish documentary about a spirit supposedly leading people astray is thought-provoking and eerie. The wood dark even in daylight, fog above the water at dawn may have frightened people for generations. On the other hand, it used to be a method to maintain discipline. The atmosphere of the film gives you chills down the spine whatever the explanation may be.

WSZYSTKIE MIALY NA IMIE ANZELIKA (THEY WERE ALL NAMED ANZHELIKA)

Recommended. This 14-minute Polish film in pink is visually creative, dynamic and point by point dissects constitutional laws and how fictional their enforcement is. Smart, visually enticing and the talking Guinea pig is the icing on the cake.  

The four films were reviewed from the organizers' screeners, cinematic reception might differ.

WAR DAS MITTELALTER SCHMUTZIG? - STIMT ES DASS...? (IS IT TRUE THAT... THERE WAS NO HYGIENE IN THE MIDDLE AGES?)

Recommended. Science proves the common beliefs wrong: ancient Roman baths water wasn't clean since everyone bathed in it, medieval people bathed a lot - still in common baths  - and were lax about nudity since men and women bathed together for two centuries, Renaissance people, remembering the plague and other health issues arising from dirty water, gave up bathing and replaced it with changing linen i.e. their clothes. The documentary makes you grateful for your private bath which only appeared in the 20th century. Still, clean water, flush toilets, cosmetics seem to obscure the largest in history amount of waste we produce, some of it from hygiene products like toothbrushes - future historians won't doubt our personal hygiene for sure. 

TOM HANKS, UN HEROS ORDINAIRE (TOM HANKS - AN ORDINARY HERO)

Recommended. An insightful documentary about how an average man, mediocre-looking in that, becomes the most bankable actor in history. The film made me realise how many different roles I had seen him in, without giving much thought to the actor. A family man, though once divorced, decent, incredibly hard-working, got where he's now just because of his perseverance. As he says, the only difference that sets great actors apart is that they don't get discouraged if 30 auditions in a row fail. Playing the common man the best, he's widely liked by the audience. He was the one who had the nerve to accept the role of a gay with AIDS in "Philadelphia". Success, like two Oscars in consecutive years, hasn't changed his passion for movies or his integrity.

The two documentaries were available on Arte TV.

LGBT+ FILM FESTIVAL POLAND 2026

LESBIAN LOVE AFFAIRS (SHORTS)

VISTA SOBRE O INFINITO (WATCHING OVER INFINITY)

Watchable. Whereas this Portuguese short about a relationship falling apart opens in an interesting form with the protagonists' thoughts whispered, the whole thing is overtalked and tiring in spite of its 15-minute duration.

Reviewed from the organizers' screener, cinematic reception might differ.

KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL 2026

ZAPISKI Z OBLEZONEGO MIASTA (NOTES FROM A BESIEGED CITY)

Watchable. This Polish full-length documentary on Kherson at war is black and white which doesn't harm the film. For the most part you don't learn anything you wouldn't have heard before, though daily life under daily fire is out of the ordinary. Towards the end you find out some people had visions before the outbreak e.g. saw a line of tanks along their street. The film also talks about the range of reasons people give to stay in the country, even if it means constant agony and fear, as one of the women confesses. The film leaves you  pondering about fate and about choices. Have the protagonists rightly become fatalistic?

LITTLE, BIG AND FAR

Switched off. In the first half an hour I learnt how museums had to compete with private collectors and the black market in acquisitions, that Goethe had collected meteorites and that dark matter and dark energy are the forces that keep the universe together and pull it apart so it keeps expanding - invisible ones, therefore dark. But this Austrian documentary is a chaotic mix of a child explaining astronomy, the astronomer's wife's letters, him walking round a Gothic town, people in a geological museum, disconnected old photographs. The sound layer consists of jarring jazz, static, guitar strumming, his pondering whether someone would be alive if a poisonous gas in trenches had blown in a different direction and the above mentioned letters slowly read out. It drags awfully, for my scientific mind it offers too scarce knowledge and astronomic photographs are few and far between. Most of all, it lacks a consistent storyline. Ordnung muss sein.

Both films were reviewed from the organizers' screeners, cinematic reception might differ.

MA TO SENS (A BIT OF MEANING)

Watchable. I'm not a fan of gloomy Polish dramas. This one is all shot in the dark, features an obligatory health issue, i.e. a neurodivergent character, and a compulsory death, actually two deaths, so meets the standards of Polish cinema. Yet I found some protagonists compelling, especially the couple in the process of a divorce and the workplace manager (Łukasz Simlat is excellent in the role). It also tackles company cultures. The film has a clear structure, is quiet, with no music and is relatable to everyone who's ever been sacked, whether from a menial job or from a corporate one. Poignant though with a glimpse of hope.

TEENAGE SEX AND DEATH AT CAMP MIASMA

Watchable. "Friday the 13th", "Black Phone 2", "Videodrome" appear to be direct inspirations, as are wokism and corporate bahaviour. The film about a lesbian director fascinated by a queer "monster" in a cult horror series has a clear-cut, sensible plot. This horror mockery plays with the genre as it starts with extremely shaky camera images and ends in the two protagonists dripping with blood while shopping for junk snacks. Characteristic actor Patrick Fischler is great as the shop assistant foreseeing "doom". There's a post-credit with him and another character like his. The whole thing, with a lucid storyline, is engaging enough, yet neither scary nor funny, the humour attempts, especially queer ones, are cringy. It's also a film about preparations to shoot a film and movies about making movies are rarely fun.

LE CANNIBALE DE MILWAUKEE (THE CANNIBAL OF MILWAUKEE)

Recommended. A dark documentary about serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer who killed 17 men. French-directed, all English-spoken, set in the little town where he used to live. The town is filled with light, unlike Jeff's childhood room which had only slit windows. His school friends: a comic book writer, a musician and a handful of others remember him and realise that while his alcoholism drove them apart right after school, this abandonment by everyone led him to killing people and filling his house with their heads. The film is relatively light visually and in the tone, as are the protagonists, yet the backdrop to why anyone's interested in the town where nothing ever happened until Dahmer is grim. As are their thoughts in the finale. A number of Dahmer's pictures help you imagine him as a living person. A brief interview excerpt lets you not just hear his voice but realise how smart deep inside he was. Depressing yet enlightening.

The documentary was available on Arte TV.

ARNIE & BARNEY

Watchable. A pleasant tale from the "Maya The Bee" universe. Maya appears only in episodes. The main protagonists are two dimwit ants. The story depicts effects of a drought quite vividly and those are the best bits. The rest is an intrigue with a hypnotic mosquito. Available only dubbed in Poland, where the protagonists' songs are in Polish too, the background ones in English. There's a post-credit.

FLAVIA

Recommended. An engaging family detective story set shortly after the war, with vivid characters. Hard to guess, complex. Very English too.

HISTOIRES PARALLELES (PARALLEL TALES)

Switched off. Asghar Farhadi's French film says it all. it's long and people-centred like the Iranian director's previous pictures, yet overly discussed and slowly presented visually like French dramas. And one of the protagonists is a writer - much too common a trope in French cinema. What's worse, that adds a spoken narrative (as the author reads her writing) to an already protracted story. Even her publisher is bored with it in the movie. What worked when the director presented another culture to Europeans, fails to engage when he deals with the French. Also, old-fashioned voyeurism doesn't excite these days. Wrong place and time. Profanities in the language and a mention of a rotting corpse juxtaposed with the smell of an attractive man put me off further.

Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.

KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL

THE DAY I WILL NEVER FORGET

Recommended. I had to pause the movie a number of times - the documentary's about such a horrible mutilation - and that's the "gentle" version, "not like in the old days", done right at the time of filming, not just in back stories, so you see the force used and hear the girls' screaming. There's also a lot about never saying 'no' to a husband, being married off at 10 to old men, about female circumcision tradition believed to come from Islam, whereas it comes from the Pharaohs rather, about the Church opposing it. The court ruling in the finale gives hope. But, throughout the film, the men, the mothers and the young girls want it - most of them anyway.

Reviewed from the organizers' screener, cinematic reception might differ.

PRACTICAL MAGIC (1998)

The re-release was preceded by TV show excerpts with the two lead actresses nowadays, where Nicole Kidman claims that people were asking for the sequel.

Watchable. A protracted mish-mash of genres: fantasy, black comedy, crime, horror, romantic comedy, family drama, musical - well, for a comedy it's not really funny but it's not a serious horror either. The set-up is silly. Sandra Bullock is great, Nicole Kidman's fine, the cop and the black character pass the test. But so many genres don't enliven (nomen omen) the action.

SUPERMARSU JA SUURI HUIJAUS (SUPER FURBALL AND THE LYING SQUIRREL)

Recommended. Each language has a different version of the title, Polish being the worst - out of line with the plot, yet the movie itself makes sense and you don't feel it's dubbed - it seems so natural. This family/school/evil developer/superhero flick offers a number of fantastically built and played characters - good and bad, adult and child and a wonderful squirrel. The duel of the campaign is engaging, the dying animal tear-jerking. But it's Finnish so it all ends well.

ODZYSKANY

Watchable. I thought I'd have a break from the huge number of horrors at cinemas these days but... 29 minutes into this religious drama a bandit throws a dog out the window, killing the pooch. I had to take a break from watching. When I continued, a few minutes later another character tells how his father died run over by a train. The young protagonist faces debts, gangsters, eviction, mother's death, father's alcoholism - not only is it a freaky accumulation of misfortunes, no problems are solved - the action jumps 4 years forward and the young man is  miraculously living in a wealthy home. There's but one joke in this otherwise grim picture: "Najlepszy był Boniek. A Włodek Smolarek krążył niczym elektron wokół jego jądra." ("Boniek was the best. And Włodek Smolarek circled like an electron around his nucleus/testicle" - based on the double meaning of 'jądro' in Polish) 

Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.

PRIMAVERA

Recommended. An amazing period drama inspired by Vivaldi but featuring music not only by him, especially dynamic background tones in one scene are riveting. The plot, about the fate of female orphans in Venice, about how the orphanage was financed, about how rich people acted and about Vivaldi himself is eye-opening. It starts with a brutal scene where newly born kittens are drowned in a canal, another canal sees slaughter blood poured in - splashing on the passing boat passengers. The human fate, for girls, often abandoned by living mothers, was grim too: chastity was their main value - examined by a male doctor, even older than the men the girls were sold to. Vivaldi was despised for part of his life and venerated for another, sick throughout, I also didn't know he had been a priest. The platonic love between him and one of the musician girls is wonderfully presented, both actors: Tecla Insolia as Cecilia and Michele Riondino, with a dog-like look and enticing eyes, as Antonio Vivaldi are perfect, as is the rest of the cast. Venetian interiors and exteriors showcase life as it was long before tourism. The whole film is magnetic.

THE DOG STARS AT IMAX

Watchable. Western music accompanies the opening, setting the scene for Wild West advernture - the movie's postapocalyptic 2035 which takes humanity back to such days. A wonderful dog is the centre of the action for the first half an hour, then he gets killed - how could anyone possibly love the movie? I was sobbing for most of the remaining film. The rest is slow but it's a necessary character introduction which takes about an hour. Frequent throwbacks to Hig's life before the epidemic build the narrative, albeit slowly. Then the story takes you from Erie to eerie Grand Junction - the creepy inhabitants are the best part - and back again. Funny occasionally, e.g. when Hig is gawping at Cima's bum and her dad Pops remarks: "Maybe you wanna concentrate on the stones?" Gripping when needed. Story-based with decent visuals but Imax is unnecessary. Some shoot-outs and a bison stampede are loud and intense in audio but bearable. The movie conveys a pleasant message that survival depends on co-operation, friendliness and goodness, yet portraying all sorts of psychos taking advantage of the civilisational collapse as well.

L'ENFANT DU DESERT

Recommended. Mostly Morocco-shot, this true story about a boy lost in a sandstorm at 2 and raised by ostriches, while befriending a dog-like fennec fox, is filled with the love of nature and freedom. A beautiful tale. Deeply touching. Most of all, the pictures of the boy carrying the fox or cuddling ostriches are mind-blowing.

KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL

ПАСХАЛЬНИЙ ДЕНЬ (EASTER DAY)

Recommended. This Ukrainian short film is a fiction inspired by true events. It keeps you in suspense for the first few minutes when you hear a conversation where two men in a car analyse passersby as if to kidnap someone. Turns out they look for army recruits. The rest tells you about ordinary life in Ukraine in a light tone since the guy turns out to be really decent and the military guys co-operative. Multidimensional and inspiring.

LA BALEINE ET LE MUSICIEN (THE WHALE AND THE MUSICIAN)

Watchable. Rone (Erwan Castex) is an electronic musician synthesising whale songs into his pieces. His idea of communicating with whales through music is inspiring. But the way the story is told, showing the wait for the whales and bland discussions with his companions made me break up the viewing into parts to be able to finish. The information from the talks was important so not to be missed but distracted from the main aim and plot. The documentary rambles instead of using more music and more cetaceans rather than talking about technicalities.

Reviewed from the organizers' screeners, cinematic reception might differ.

FRANCES HA (2012)

Watchable. A mumblecore drama not only written by, but also with Greta Gerwig in the lead role, her movie parents are her actual folks too. That's also one movie where the final disclaimer about the characters being fictitious got me thinking - so real they feel. Especially Frances, first happy-go-lucky, then still a kidult but getting growingly surrounded by responsible, well-off professionals who sometimes get pregnant, while she is still trying to find solid ground in her life. First I hated her: smoking, irresponsible, annoying. But it becomes easy to feel sorry for her and sympathise when she's always second best in her job search, has to move places a lot - much like me back in the day. Great pop music fills passages preventing them from becoming boring. The main downside is the lack of colour. Literally. The movie's black and white. I bet the dancing, the cityscapes, Christmas lights, nature would look so much more alluring in colour.

Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.

AREK.MAMA.PANORAMA

Recommended. Arek Pasożyt, 36, is a zany artist whose arguably best works are irreverent, funny makeovers of holy pictures. His search for the Holy Grail of the long lost enormous panorama of the Tatra mountains, one I've first heard of, intertwines with his conversations with his girlfriend on the one hand and with his parents on the other. The family relationship is the biggest fun. His mum bringing him more things to pack is hilarious. This personal film unwititngly builds a portrait of the whole Y generation aka Millennials. 

Reviewed from the distributor's screener, cinematic reception might differ.

КУЗЬМА: СТРАШНО ВЕСЕЛИЙ (KUZMA: FEARLESSLY CHEERFUL)

Watchable. Whether it's the dynamic edit or Kuzma's charisma, you can't take your eyes off the screen. I've never been a fan so I just viewed it as a human story. An average man, with mediocre music skills, little flair for dancing or sense of style formed a long-lasting band. Nothing special about him, yet his passion for playing and singing, where money never mattered, brought him fame in Ukraine. Lots of last century music is monophonic, which feels archaic. Grainy footage magnifies that impression. The detailed history of the band will appeal to Скрябін (Skryabin) fans rather. The political level of this documentary was more interesting for me: from the time he discovered Polish and western music played by Polish radio stations - since he lived close to the border and a mere mountain pass cut him off the Soviet media, through his support for Yanukovych - turns out many musicians had attached themselves to parties during elections since the 1990s, to his financial and organizational support for the army once the full-scale war broke out. A fun fact is his family would make trips to Poland to trade goods in the 1990s. What strikes you in the film is how sincere and straightforward he was - that must have been a large part of his allure. A perennial kidult, still crazy in his 40s when he died tragically in an accident. I shed some tears at the ending.