Movie reviews

KRAKOW FILM FESTIVAL

The festival will take place 30 May - 6 June 2021 in Kraków cinemas and online. Last year's was online only. The streaming platform gathered new audience so the organizers count on it this year too. The screenings will take place at a specific time. 

Among Polish offerings are:

Adrian Apanel's "Stancja" ("The Last Room On the Left") - a short horror-comedy where a student is shown around a lodging house and each room and inhabitant is weirder and weirder. The interior and exterior of the house are "acted" by two various locations.

Tomasz Wysokiński's "Spacer z aniołami" ("Walk With Angels") - a documentary shot in South Africa.

Kinga Syrek's animation "Za późno" ("Too Late") on Andy Warhol's actress Edie Sedgwick and her relationship with her father - which actually drove her miles away from home where she met Warhol - with a soundtrack by Grammy winner Robert Margouleff.

Zbigniew Czapla's "On Time" covers a Japanese topic and is a "no budget" production where he made everything himself, including technicalities.

Michał Kawecki's "Antybohater" ("Not Hero At All") is described as a hilarious film about a disabled person.

It's one of the few festivals in the world whose winners have a path paved to candidate for Oscars. American Film Academy publishes a list of festivals which allow the winners an easier access - at KFF the categories are: short documentary, short animation, short fiction and full-length documentary. In practice it means they don't have to meet all the criteria, e.g. cinema screenings in the US. Most qualifying short animations festivals are in the US. There are just a few festivals in the world qualifying in so many categories. 

In spite of the pandemic, 283 Polish films (over 2500 in total) were submitted for the festival: 141 documentaries, 86 actors' movies and 101 animations. Women seem to specialise in animations. The documentaries range from: Jewish topics - common for this festival but also on MMA or persons famous in Polish history. Polish entries are watched by at least 3 selectors each, foreign ones by 2. 

All industry events (for the producers) will be held online.

TVP (Polish Television) will be a patron so I assume it's only a matter of time when the (Polish at least) films will be in their program.