The 54th Krakow Film Festival – one of the oldest and biggest European events dedicated to documentary, animated and short feature films – opens today, May 25.
The festival (May 25 – June 1) is being opened by the screening of Krzysztof Magowski’s documentary about famous Polish singer Czesław Niemen “A Dream of Warsaw.”
The core of the Krakow Film Festival consists of four coordinate competitions – documentary competition, short films competition, music documentaries competition DocFilmMusic, and national competition.
This year, 98 competition titles will be evaluated by four juries chaired by Wojciech Staroń, Jan Kanty-Pawluśkiewicz, Wojciech Marczewski and Jerzy Śladkowski.
The program is complemented by non-competition screenings grouped into 12 thematic sections, including World Stories, Somewhere in Europe, Panorama of Polish Film, Festival Award Winners and others.
This year’s special guest is the Great Britain – the most recent British documentaries will be presented in the section Focus on the UK, accompanied by professionals’ conference, explaining the functioning of the British film market.
A new feature of this year’s festival are scientific films shown in the section Docs+Science, organised together with the Foundation for AGH. Fans of screenings under the open sky will enjoy the section Sound of Music in the open-air cinema Kino Pod Wawelem.
The theme of this year’s films is the Club 27 with artists such as Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin. The organisers of the festival have also prepared something for the younger audience – Kids&Youth Fest includes morning screenings for school groups and weekend screenings for individual viewers.
In total, during 8 days of the festival, the audience will have a chance to watch 230 Polish and foreign films on 10 cinema screens located in the city center. Many of the screenings will be accompanied by Q&A meetings with the authors or characters.
Thanks to the cooperation with the Polish Filmmakers Association, for the second time the Krakow Film Festival will also have its mini edition in Warsaw. From 27th May to 1st June the Kultura cinema will host screenings of music documentaries taking part in the competition DocFilmMusic.
Yet, Krakow Film Festival is not only about films. Among this year’s accompanying events there are 3 exhibitions and 3 concerts. In the National Museum in Krakow will be shown a unique collection of foreign posters to Andrzej Wajda’s films, and the exhibition dedicated to the work of Stanley Kubrick, whose climax will be the screening of the documentary “Stanley Kubrick: Life in Pictures” attended by the director Jan Harlan.
The photography exhibition of Wojciech Staroń, a prominent documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, who also chairs the jury of the documentary competition, will be opened on Sunday afternoon in Malopolski Ogrod Sztuki.
The programme of the 54th KFF also includes 3 concerts: the klezmer band Kroke will perform at Alchemia in the Kazimierz district and Projekt Nosowska – at Forum Przestrzenie and the performance of the characters of “Let them love, let them dream” in Pauza in Garden.
The Industry Zone, designed for film industry professionals, includes the Krakow Film Market, Dragon Forum pitching, presentations of rough cut animated (Animated in Poland) and documentary projects (Docs to Go!), seminars, conferences and networking meetings.
A detailed programme of the festival can be found at the festival website.
Krakow Film Festival has an accreditation of the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF). It nominates films for the European Film Awards and Oscars for the best short film.
Photo courtesy: Krakow Film Festival
