Polonica at the 47th PFF
Along with the Main Competition, Polonica is the oldest Festival section. To qualify for the section, a film needs to satisfy the basic criterion – it must be a production with a Polish accent. Owing to the fact that Polish cinema is open to European and international co-productions, the section becomes more and more diverse and full of surprising titles.
This year, there are as many as 57 Polish films in the Festival competitions. Polonica can be a great bonus to that set, especially as all the productions presented in the section are of high quality. Starting from Borders of Love and Anatolian Leopard, both films awarded at large international festivals, through defiant Bertrand Mandico (with a surprising role of Agata Buzek) and Roving Woman, presented at Tribeca Festival, produced by Lena Góra (also the scriptwriter and the title role performer) and Wim Wenders himself, to the Ukrainian films, which are very important to me and at the same time they are very good productions: Rhino by Oleh Sencow and Pamfir by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk. Polonica section promises to provide us with a wonderful experience – says the Artistic Director of the Festival, Tomasz Kolankiewicz.
Films that will be screened as part of the Polonica section include Rhino (directed by Oleh Sencow) – taking place in the 1990s Ukraine, during the USSR transformation, a young man known as Rhino starts out as a petty thief only to quickly move up in the criminal hierarchy; Roving woman – produced by Wim Wenders, the film is Michał Chmielewski’s directing debut, – the main protagonist, Sara, kicked out from home, steals a car, falls in love with its owner and decides to find him; After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (directed by Bertrand Mandico) – a fantasy film, taking place in distant future, on a savage planet, and presenting a story of Roxy and her mother who begin roaming the fantastical and spectral territories of their dirty paradise to track down the killer; Borders of Love by Tomasz Wiński – a film about a long-standing couple who decides to spice up their relationship, they start to share their erotic fantasies and secret desires, increasingly pushing the boundary of love and sex; Pamfir (directed by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk) – when the main protagonist’s son sets a church on fire, the father needs to reach out to his contacts from the underworld to pay the debt, but with every decision, he gets more and more entangled with the convoluted web of corruption and mafia deals; and Anatolian Leopard (directed by Emre Kayiş) – a lonely manager of the oldest zoo in Turkey and an introverted female officer want to stop the privatisation process of the zoo by faking the big cat’s escape, they set in motion an absurd charade that spins out of control.
List of films in Polonica section:
After Blue (Dirty Paradise), directed by: Bertrand Mandico, polonica: cast: Agata Buzek
Borders of Love, directed by: Tomasz Wiński, polonica: written, directed and produced by: Tomasz Wiński, co-produced by: Lava Films
Anatolian Leopard, directed by: Emre Kayiş, polonica: co-produced by: Maria Blicharska, co-financed by the Polish Film Institute
Pamfir, directed by: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, polonica: edited by: Nikodem Chabior and co-financed by the Polish Film Institute
Rhino, directed by: Oleh Sencow; polonica: edited by: Karolina Maciejewska, production manager: Anna Zajączkowska, co-produced by: Apple Film Production, co-financed by the Polish Film Institute
Roving Woman, directed by: Michał Chmielewski, polonica: directed by and production design: Michał Chmielewski, written by: Lena Góra and Michał Chmielewski, director of photography: Łukasz Dziedzic, music: Teoniki Rożynek, edited by: Przemysław Chruścielewski, producer: Lena Góra, co-financed by the Polish Film Institute
The 47th Polish Film Festival will take place between 12th and 17th September 2022.
