Special Screenings at the 50th PFF
The Special Screenings section of the 50th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia features six distinctive events organised with the Festival’s partners.
The first of these will be a cinephile screening of the first two films by Jerzy Skolimowski, prepared in cooperation with FIPRESCI: Identification Marks: None and Walk-over preceded by an introduction by Michał Oleszczyk and Ola Salwa, and a screening of the latest work by the director Eo, with an introduction by Ola Salwa. During the Festival, Jerzy Skolimowski will receive a special FIPRESCI 100 Lifetime Achievement Award, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the world’s oldest film critics’ association.
The PFF anniversary is an excellent opportunity to highlight the international relations between the festival and Polish cinema. They will also be heard during an event organised under the patronage of the European Film Academy, which will include a screening of the first Academy Award winner (then called Felix) – A Short Film About Killing by Krzysztof Kieślowski, also winner of the Grand Prize of the Festival “Gdańsk Golden Lions”. The events will include a meeting with Mirosław Baka and Sławomir Idziak.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the death of Marcin Wrona – a film, television,and theatre director, screenwriter, producer, and lecturer. With his student film A Magnet Man, he visited dozens of festivals around the world, winning many awards and delighting us with his imagination and directorial bravery. We discussed Marcin Wrona’s subsequent features at length – from My Flesh My Blood to The Christening to his last work, Demon. In each of them, he placed his characters in hopeless situations and forced them to make impossible choices. As an artist,he was attentive, perceptive, intense, and uncompromising. Marcin Wrona died tragically in 2015, during the 40th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. Ten years later, we will revisit two of his films: the short film A Magnet Man and Demon. The screening will be accompanied by a remembrance meeting dedicated to Marcin Wrona, attended by creators and artists who worked with him: Paweł Maślona, Marcin Macuk i Katarzyna Warzecha.
Indie Film in Gdynia will return to the 50th Polish Film Festival with the digitally restored film Kallafiorr by Jacek Borcuch. We will present the director’s debut, a tragicomedy with elements of crime fiction, maintained in the aesthetics of the 1970s, hailed as the Polish “post-Tarantino dogma”. Kallafiorr is believed to be the first Polish independent film to be widely distributed and to have opened the era of independent films in Polish cinema. Since then, they have also been featured at the Polish Film Festival. After the screening, a meeting with the director will be led by Korek Bojanowski.
Together with the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute, we invite you to Double Impact. This year, as part of a “double screening“, two gangster films will be shown: Va Banque by Juliusz Machulski and The Sting by George Roy Hill. The screenings will be preceded by a lecture by film expert Dr. Miłosz Stelmach, and the event will also include a meeting with Juliusz Machulski.
In cooperation with Michał Oleszczyk and the SpoilerMaster podcast and Janusz Zaorski, two films from the peasant movement, based on the prose by Edward Redliński, will be presented: The Linnet by Witold Leszczyński and Progress by Janusz Zaorski. The year 2025 would have been the 85th birthday of Edward Redliński, an outstanding prose writer who died in June last year. The writer’s interests anticipated the current fashion for folk history and resulted in works of reportage and literary fiction that reflected 20th-century Polish rurality, numerous stories of social advancement, and the struggle between tradition and modernity. The screening of The Linnet will be preceded by an introduction by Michał Oleszczyk, while the screening of Progress will be followed by a conversation between Michał Oleszczyk and director Janusz Zaorski. The event will be recorded as an episode of the SpoilerMaster podcast.
Special Screenings at the 50th PFF
- 100 Years of FIPRESCI
Screening of Identification Marks: None and Walk-over, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. Introduction by Michał Oleszczyk and Ola Salwa Eo, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski. Introduction by Ola Salwa - European Film Academy – The First Award
A Short Film About Killing, directed by: Krzysztof Kieślowski. After the film, a meeting with Mirosław Baka and Sławomir Idziak - Marcin Wrona – 10 years later
Screenings of: A Magnet Man and Demon, directed by: Marcin Wrona. After the screenings, a meeting with Paweł Maślona, Marcin Macuk and Katarzyna Warzecha, moderated by Anita Skwara - Indie Film in Gdynia
Kallafiorr, directed by: Jacek Borcuch. After the film, a meeting with the director, led by Korek Bojanowski - FINA: Double Hit
Va Banque, directed by: Juliusz Machulski
The Sting, directed by: George Roy Hill
After the films, a meeting with Juliusz Machulski, led by Miłosz Stelmach - Redliński x 2
The Linnet, directed by: Witold Leszczyński. Introduction by Michała Oleszczyk
Progress, directed by: Janusz Zaorski. After the film, a meeting with Janusz Zaorski, led by Michał Oleszczyk. Partner: SpoilerMaster
The 50th Polish Film Festival will take place from 22nd to 27th September 2025 in Gdynia. The Festival is produced by the Pomeranian Film Foundation in Gdynia.
