The festival ended this evening with the prize ceremony in the huge Kijew Kino. The jury, of which I was the chairman, judging 20 international documentaries, made the following decision – quoting the short motivations, reviews of three main prize winners follow below:

Golden Horn: The Argentinian Lesson by Wojciech Staron. The film maintains its form and story from beginning to end, a story not only about different cultures but much more about the beauty of a young boy and a young girl getting closer to each other, a growing friendship. The jury finds the film a true piece of art.

Silver Horn (Medium-length documentary): Phnom Penh Lullaby by Pawel Kloc. The film uses a strong cinematic language to depict a very unconventional  struggle for love and acceptance in a devastating family environment under hard existential conditions. A very strong character development kept the jury on the edge of our seats. Silver Horn (Feature-length documentary): Regretters by Markus Lindén. The film has found a perfect solution to self-analysis performed by two human beings, who have undergone sex changes in search of their identity and the gender of their personality. The dialogue carries the touching story in a perfect arc.

Honorary Mention: Agnus Dei. The Lamb of God by Alejandra Sanchez.The film follows the bravery of the main character’s decision to challenge the institution of the church. Honorary Mention: Doctors by Tomasz Wolski (photo). The film is taking its audience to an important public institution and tells the story through amazing imagery and sparse and sometimes humoristic dialogue in serious moments of life and death.

For awards in the many other categories, take a look at site of the festival. A pleasure to see that the film of Marcel Lozinski got the first prize in the national competion, see review below.

www.krakowfilmfestival.pl

http://www.kff.com.pl/en/news/168

It has a story, a point of view, a humanistic approach and a director, who is also the cameraman and who has the skills to catch magical moments as they happen in life. A decade ago the director made ”Siberian Lesson” and now he goes to Argentina with (his family) the same teacher and her two kids. She teaches Polish to Argentinians who have Polish origins, and we see how this is practised, while the son, Janek, takes a soft step into the world of meeting the opposite sex. Into adulthood, one could maybe also say. He meets and plays with Marcia, who is a bit older than him, it seems, they are always together, he helps her earning a bit of money, there is time for games but there is also time to discover the harsh reality of Marcia’s family. They travel by train to meet her father, who lives separated from the mother, who has mental problems. 

This is a film with a social content, but also a love story with many levels where much emotion is to be read in the faces of the characters. Dialogue is sparse, images give the information needed, step by step there is a development and an interpretation being made with painting-kind-of-tableaux, from the location, from the small village where it all takes place, to chapter a narrative with many sensitive and metaphoric images.

Poland, 56 mins. 2011

www.krakowfilmfestival.pl

I want to be seen, says one them. I want to be conventional, says the other. Both of them took a very unconventional decision, to change from being a man to being a woman. The title says that they have regretted that decision. The film tell their stories, with all the pain they have suffered, but also with warmth and humour. They are very different and that gives the film an extra dimension. You listen attentively every single minute, carried as the narrative is by dialogue. And that is where the decision of the filmmaker comes in with a strike of genius:

They walk into a studio, the two of them, they sit down, and they talk to each other, or to the camera, with small private and public archive material presented to show, how they looked in their childhood, in school, in their marriage (Isadora alias Orlando), all the way through accompanied by their own commentaries. Orlando has gone back to being a man again (got a penis and breast operation), Mikael (alias Mikaela) is waiting for the same operation.

Their stories have been told as a theatre play but when Mikael after hesitation agreed to take part, it was luckily made into this documentary that profits succesfully from the preciseness in the dialogue. Why do you want to have that penis operation back, says Orlando, can’t you just be you, you are a man. Orlando was married for 11 years, her husband knew nothing about her male past, it ended dramatically, now he is on his own, an extravagant feminine exhibitionist with clever remarks to Mikael, who also cleverly insists on being an orderly, ordinary citizen.

Talking faces are boring in documentary films… no they are not, look at these two brave human beings with all their experiences and wisdom. They walk out of the studio, a theatre of life has been performed.  

Sweden, 58 mins. 2010

www.krakowfilmfestival.pl

From a filmic point of view it has everything, it is so well done: strong characters, who are developed, as a similar strong story is being unfolded, with conflicts, dramas, emotions, intimacy, closeness. The style is aggressive, the camera goes everywhere and is excellently performed, the voice-off text is sometimes a bit heavy but the dialogue in many scenes is amazingly good…

Yes, I have double feelings with this film that is so rich in his hybrid form between fiction and documentary. Is it exploiting its characters, I thought while watching, no, they know they are in a film, and they (re)act maybe stronger for that reason, was the next impression… they, Ilan, the Israeli who ended up in the capital of Cambodia, a tragic character, who fights for some kind of decency for the child he has with a young alchoholic cambodian woman, who have several other children placed here and there. They work in the street, Ilan as a fortune-teller, in the nights of Phnom Penh, among drug distribution and prostitution, in deep shit. What is the future for the children we see?

There are some editing problems in the film, especially when there are cuts from the small family being in a bus, then in a boat, then in the street, the structure is a bit confusing and the music far too bombastic for my taste, but having said so, this film stays in your mind for a long time, also because of its evident absurd humour. Boom-boom, they say in Phnom Penh, the same as bunga-bunga in Berlusconi’s Italy.

Poland, 2011, 86 mins.

www.krakowfilmfestival.pl

It is so natural that Krakow has been a Cultural Capital of Europe. It has history, beautiful buildings, an active outside life with loads of cafés – yes, we are many visitors in this city and the Main Market Square should be visited early morning or late night when we are not so many – and there are cinemas, that have a high quality repertory, Lars von Trier’s Melancholy opened on the same day as in Copenhagen – and it is a university city with students sitting on benches in the many green areas in the good weather preparing for exams.

And a city with a sad background as so excellently conveyed in the Historical Museum that has been installed at the former enamel factory of Oskar Schindler on the other side of the river, at Lipowa 4. About the daily life of the Jews in the ghetto, about Schindler and his saving of a thousand Jews in his factory, the story we know from Steven Spielberg’s film, shot in Krakow, about the German occupation and the occupiers upperclass life. About the Plaszow concentration camp nearby. Interviews with survivors, Polish and Jews, all is subtitled in English for the foreign visitor, documents, including letters written by the 8 year old Roman Polanski, year by year, visual and oral, an exemplary museum. High quality documentation.

www.mhk.pl

Vera and Marcel, brother and sister. Marcel, film director. They sit together around a table. They do so to recollect and remember Tonia, the mother of the siblings, a woman who was in jail and a woman who was filmed by Marcel when he was at film school. The mother was arrested in 1949 for spying against the communist regime, performing bourgeois behaviour, with relations to the notorious American spy Noel Field. She was in jail for more than 5 years, leaving her children to be in children homes.

The set-up by Marcel Lozinski gives the viewer a very emotional journey through the childhood of Vera and Marcel. Their story is told through them reading letters from their mother, texts from investigation papers, accompanied by photos from the family and clips from the footage of Lozinski.

It is all held in a very controlled style with close-ups of the three, with the faces expressing emotions to what is being read and talked about. Was she guilty, Tonia, is not the main issue, she felt guilty and did not want to be released from the jail where she went through terrible torture, described in details in writing. She came out and the son and the daughter remember differently, how they met her. It is a painful journey in memories for the two, who also have had a complicated relationship as grown-ups.

Marcel Lozinski, it is revealed, has in many ways a similar story as the two, he mirrors himself in the story, it seems, in a film that is masterly done, tense and precise, letting emotions come out but never trying to add effects to enlarge the drama.

Poland, 2011, 58 mins. (in National Competition in Krakow Film Festival 2011)

www.krakowfilmfestival.pl

In the old festival hotel Cracovia, next door to the Kijow Cinema, where the main programme of the festival is running, there is a so-called Industry Zone, where festival people meet and talk to filmmakers in an informal atmosphere about what they are looking for, and where there are 30 video booths available for buyers and others, who look for films. It is all very well organised here in Krakow, and while praising the professionalism what a pleasure to see technically perfect screenings in the cinemas.

Small talk – I talked to two festival programmers, who entertained me with info on how they do their selection screenings (you have to remember that some festivals get thousands of entries for selectors to watch…) anyway, it shocked and amused me to hear that one was ironing at the same time as watching the screen, another was knitting, a third one watched in trains or when  the kid was doing ice-skating. Yes, there are many films in the world and there are many ways of watching, sitting, lying, in bed, on a couch, in a summer house in good weather with a good computer screen.

Just that you know if you happen to be a filmmaker!