The 60th Krakow Film Festival will take place!

It was expected… alas… but cheers to the festival team and the filmmakers that the festival will take place… online. I had expected – in my selfnishness – with my wife – to have celebrated our silver wedding in Krakow and follow the fine festival in persona. It will be at home in Copenhagen. Here is the press release that came in this morning:

The full film programme, KFF Industry events and a lot of special offers will be available online for the audiences all over Poland!

Exactly in two months’ time, on May 31, the 60th Krakow Film Festival will begin. Similarly to two other prestigious European festivals – CPH:DOX in Copenhagen and Visions du Réel in Nyon – the programme of the Krakow Film Festival will be moved entirely online! The most recent documentary, animated and short films from all around the world, long anticipated Polish premiers and meetings with filmmakers – they all will be available from the safety of your own home.

“We do realise that nothing can compare to the festival atmosphere, the collective experience of an audience in a cinema theatre or backstage meetings. However, as we’re facing an uncertain future, we’ve decided to organise the Festival in this new formula. We do it out of respect for the filmmakers who are impatiently waiting to present their most recent work to the festival jury and the audience, but also for the audience itself – we want to give them a worthy escape from the worries of everyday life and restore a tiny bit of normality in this trying times” – Krzysztof Gierat, the director of the Krakow Film Festival, explains. He adds: “There will come a time when we will all celebrate the festival’s anniversary together.” 

During the 60th Krakow Film Festival, just as in previous years, we will see around 200 films from all around the world. Among them documentaries, short films and animations which will take part in competitions: three international ones and a Polish one. Four international juries will choose the winning films and give away awards worth 238 000 PLN. Plenty of other films will be presented in the special sections. As opposed to VOD platforms, the festival films will be only available to watch in Poland, during the screening times specified in the festival schedule. After the film screenings, just like every year, the audience will be able to join the Q&As with filmmakers and film protagonists – this time through social media and festival website broadcast.

All festival pass, accreditation and single ticket holders will get an access to the films online. Due to the change of the formula of the Festival all tickets and passes are now being offered on our website in new attractive prices. The Q&As, debates and special events will be available online to everyone free of charge.

The KFF INDUSTRY section will be open solely to the accredited guests from Poland and abroad who will gain an online access to the digital video library as well as conferences, lectures, panel discussions and presentations of animated and documentary projects on different stages of development. Co-production market and Doc Lab Poland workshops, co-organised by Wladyslaw Slesicki Film Foundation, will be made available for them as well.

The Krakow Film Festival is on the exclusive list of the Academy Awards short film (live action, animated, documentary) and documentary feature qualifying events. It also recommends films for the European Film Awards in the same categories. 

The 60th Krakow Film Festival will take place from May 31 to June 7, 2020. The full festival programme will be announced mid-April. 

The Photo is from last year’s winner: Advocate by Rachel Leah Jones og Philippe Bellaïche.

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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