Noticias

Yellow Veil Pictures, the New-York and L.A.-based arthouse genre distribution company, has acquired U.S. distribution rights for two features from Polish director Jagoda Szelc, Bloody Disgusting can exclusively report this afternoon. We’ve also got poster art for both.

Tower. A Bright Day (2017) and Monument (2018) will both be released May 30 on Digital from Yellow Veil Pictures, with physical releases coming later this year.

Tower. A Bright Day follows a protective woman who has raised her young niece in the countryside as her own daughter. When her sister suddenly returns, it triggers a sense that she may be back to reclaim her offspring or to implement even more ominous plans.

The film premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and Gdynia Film Festival, where it won best feature film and best screenplay.

Monument follows a group of hotel interns who wake up in an ice-cold van. They don’t know each other yet,...

When she was a student at the prestigious Lodz Film School in Poland, Jagoda Szelc was offered the chance to shoot a feature film. It was an unexpected opportunity for the aspiring filmmaker, who was then in her third year. But after it was produced on a shoestring budget, “Tower. A Bright Day” would go on to play the Berlin Film Festival and win a host of awards in Poland, unexpectedly catapulting Szelc into the limelight.

It was not an easy place for a first-time filmmaker to be. “I was very lost,” Szelc admits. Critics compared “Tower” to the works of male directors and seemed flummoxed that a young woman could helm such an auspicious debut. In one TV segment that left a lasting mark, two male presenters argued that Szelc was too young to understand what she was doing behind the camera. “There was a lot of patronizing [behavior toward] me,...

The 12th edition of the festival will unspool from 29 November-2 December, showcasing movies by Filip Bajon, Jan Komasa, Jagoda Szelc, Adrian Panek and Jacek Borcuch. The period film The Butler by Filip Bajon, which won two Eagles (the Polish film industry’s annual national awards) this spring, scooped the Silver Lions at the Gdynia Film Festival, and portrays the intertwined destinies of a Polish family between 1900 and 1945 in the north of the Kashubia region, will tomorrow open the 12th edition of Kinopolska, out of competition and in the presence of its director. Every year, the festival, which will unspool in Paris from 29 November-2 December, in the Le Balzac cinema, just off the Champs-Elysées, trains its spotlight on the sheer diversity of Polish film output, which sometimes finds it tricky to secure decent distribution in France (apart from big names such as Pawel Pawlikowski). Interestingly, Filip Bajon will...

The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival has wrapped for 2019 and the complete list of award winners has been announced, including Daniel Isn't Real for "Best Picture" in the horror feature category and Travis Stevens' Girl on the Third Floor winning "Best Gooey Effects." Also in today's Horror Highlights: My Girlfriend the Serial Killer Indiegogo details, Pumpkin Spice Podcast season finale episode details, and The Spirit Gallery's new DVD and limited VHS info.

Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2019 Awards Announced: "The Brooklyn Horror Film Festival closed out their fourth edition on October 24th with a sold-out screening of Joe Begos’ Vfw. The Screening was hosted at Nitehawk Cinema Prospect Park with Director Joe Begos, Writer Max Brallier, and cast members Stephen Lang, Tom Williamson and Linnea Wilson in attendance.

This year the festival featured over 100 films and events across Brooklyn at Nitehawk Cinema, Cobble Hill Cinema, Ifp Made in NY Media Center...

Home and Film4 have announce the programme for the fourth annual FilmFear season – the biggest programme yet will comprise six days of horror, extreme cinema, cult favourites and special guests coming to Manchester this October.

Kicking off the season on Tuesday 29 October will be a special preview of The Lighthouse, director Robert Eggers’ much-anticipated follow-up to his folk-horror debut The Witch (2015). Starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as lighthouse keepers battling the elements, isolation, inner demons and more on a remote and mysterious Maine island in the 1890s, the eerie period tale will be on general release in January 2020 making Home audiences amongst the first to see the film in the UK. FilmFear and Home will also tour the film to Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds the following evening.

Following in its wake over the course of six nights through to Sunday 3 November come more previews of highly anticipated films,...

Lund, the festival from the town of the same name in Sweden, is gearing up for its twenty-fith edition at the end of September. Last week they announced the travelling roadshow called Nerd culture on Tour - Skåne complete with screenings of Clive Barker's Hellraiser. Today they have announced the first handful of titles for this year's program. The first wave of title include György Pálfi’s His Master's Voice, Adrian Panek’s debut Werewolf, and Jagoda Szelc’s Singular Monument. These three films are also the first titles to participate in the Siren Competition where the winning film will received a cash prize of 1000 Eur. Out of that 12-film lineup six films will be nominated for Lund’s Méliès d’Argent, the winner going on to...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

One of the films on the slate for the 2019 North Bend Film Fest is the Polish drama Monument. The second feature from director Jagoda Szelc, the film is a hypnotic experience, yet is difficult to break down. Part drama, part character study, part science fiction, part performance art, the film challenges the viewer in fascinating ways as it creates something altogether unique.

Monument opens with a group of students en route to a remote hotel for a hospitality internship. The students are all strangers to one another, but make friendly banter and joke around with each another on the ride. The bus drives through the night, and when the students awaken, they discover that they have arrived. They are quickly met by the hotel's manager, a strict woman with a no-nonsense attitude. She assigns the group name tags that either say “Pawel” or “Ania”—the customers don't actually care what their names are,...

New projects by Jagoda Szelc and Leszek Dawid are among the winners, while emerging talents were awarded during the New Horizons Studio+. The ninth edition of the Polish Days held during the 19th New Horizons International Film Festival (25 July - 3 August), in Wrocław, concluded with the announcement of the award winners by head of industry Weronika Czołnowska and the festival’s artistic director Marcin Pieńkowski. Starting with the projects in development, The Delicate Balance of Terror by Jagoda Szelc (director of Monument in 2018) was the recipient of the ColorOffOn Film Post-Production Award. The project is an “ecological thriller” where a group of friends, who spend their time in a forest cabin, decides to embrace the rather challenging experiment of living through the night and sleeping in the morning. When the initial entertaining games begin to reveal their dark reality, things soon take a far more serious turn. Produced...

Screen collaborated with the festival’s Polish Days for the first time this year.

This year’s Polish Days, the industry event of Wroclaw-based New Horizons Film Festival, wrapped yesterday with the presentation of the key industry prizes.

Presented for the first time this year, Screen International collaborated with Polish Days to hand out an award to the best project in the Works-in-Progress showcase, with the winner decided upon by attending Screen delegates.

The inaugural prize was given to Broad Peak, Leszek Dawid’s highly ambitious mountaineering film which is part-way through shooting. The film is based on real life...

‘I’m A Killer’ director Maciej Pieprzyca returns with jazz musician biopic ‘Ikar’.

New projects from I’m A Killer director Maciej Pieprzyca and Tower. A Bright Day. filmmaker Jagoda Szelc are among the 23 titles selected for Polish Days, the industry event for Polish cinema running during New Horizons International Film Festival (July 25-August 4).

The event will take place on July 30 – August 1, with over 200 industry guests expected to attend.

The line-up includes five completed features, eight projects in a works-in-progress presentation and 10 titles in development.

Pieprzyca is attending with works-in-progress title Ikar, a biographical film about the blind 20th century Polish jazz musician Mieczysław Kosz.

Cannes — Buoyed by a wave of international successes, including Pawel Pawlikowski’s 2019 foreign-language Oscar nominee “Cold War,” Polish cinema will get a fitting showcase Sunday morning with the presentation of five new projects at New Horizons’ Polish Days Goes to Cannes.

Organized in conjunction with the Polish Film Institute, Polish Days is the most important industry event of the New Horizons Intl. Film Festival. Each year roughly 25 new Polish projects are presented at the festival in Wroclaw to a packed house of producers, sales agents, festival programmers, funding bodies, and other industry representatives from around the globe.

Weronika Czołnowska, the festival’s head of industry, said the Goes to Cannes showcase is in some ways “an extension of Polish Days,” calling it “a broader promotion of Polish cinema.”

With its two previous editions, the program has had some notable triumphs, including Ewa Podgórska’s documentary “Diagnosis,” which premiered in the...

Director Peter Strickland’s “In Fabric” starring “Game of Thrones” star Gwendoline Christie is set to open the fifth Mammoth Lakes Film Festival, the organization has announced today along with their film lineup.

The festival in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., will take place May 22-26 and feature several films’ U.S. debuts. In addition to the narrative feature categories, a short films program will include 50 narrative, documentary, animated, experimental and episodic shorts.Strickland’s horror comedy from A24 follows the life of a cursed dress as it travels to different owners, all with devastating consequences.

“We’re excited to bring such an amazing and eclectic lineup of films to this milestone year of our festival,” said festival director Shira Dubrovner. “We’re also thrilled to be hosting over 100 filmmakers this year, who will get to experience all the scenic wonder that the Eastern Sierras has to offer.”

A panel of jurors,...

During her intro at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Polish director Jagoda Szelc stated that in her new feature film Monument, she doesn't try to tell a story. She asked the audience to watch the film with the idea that it's a ritual they'll be watching, rather than a narrative. To me, those seemed like words of warning indeed. I'm not generally that big a fan of experimental cinema, and coupled with the fact that Monument is a low-budget project by the Lodz film academy, with most of the actors graduate students, I wondered what level of radical incomprehensibility I was in for. I needn't have worried though: those who saw the very eerie trailer which is currently out, will have a pretty good idea...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

What is Monument? A fever dream? A thought experiment? An apprenticeship as endurance test or rather an exercise in cruelty? Sure to be one of the more ambigous international premieres at the upcoming Rotterdam Film Festival, Monument follows a group of students performing various tasks as hotel interns, but the mundane decor gradually gives way to spine-tingling menace. The teaser, much like the film itself, is cryptic but perfectly captures the offkilter atmosphere that Jagoda Szelc already tapped into with her peculiar debut, Tower. A Bright Day. While her first film, a Berlinale (2018) world premiere, mixed a sense of foreboding with domestic drama before veering into downright uncanny territory, Monument could connect with a broader audience insofar as it embraces genre thrills more overtly....

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Communion is one of the 15 shortlisted doc features (out of 166 originally submitted films) which have recently been announced For Consideration for the 91st Oscars® presented by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. *

Living amid domestic instability and teenaged volatility, a sister and brother play out their lives on camera. At fourteen, Ola is already functioning as the woman of the house, cooking and cleaning for her lethargic father and helping her energetic autistic brother, Nikodem, prepare for his first Holy Communion. Throughout, she longs for her mother, whose absence is never explained, yet always deeply felt.

As the date of Communion nears, it becomes an opportunity for the family to meet up and Ola is entirely responsible for planning the perfect family celebration. Communion is a portrait of young womanhood and crash course in growing up that teaches us that no failure is final, and that change is possible and needed,...

Aleksandra Terpinska’s “Other People” and Peter Dourountzis’s “Rascal” won the inaugural Arte Kino International Prize at the 10th edition of Les Arcs Film Festival’s Co-Production Village.

The award was given by Remi Burah, who runs Arte France Cinéma and launched in 2016 ArteKino Festival, a European online festival in partnership with the digital service Festival Scope. Each “Other People” and “Rascal” will receive 2000 Euros.

Mixing comedy, drama and musical, “Other People” tells the story of a man who lives with his mum and teenage sister who starts a romance with Iwona, a woman in her early 40’s who cannot cope with her marriage. “Other People” was selected as part of this year’s focus on Poland. Terpinska’s last short “The Best Fireworks Ever” premiered at Cannes’s Critics’ Week and won two awards.

Meanwhile, “Rascal” in a French-language thriller following a charming young man who arrives in...

Marylise Dumont’s “Black Dog,” Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen’s “Ashes and Snow” and “Each of Us” are among the 20 projects which will be pitched at the 10th edition of Les Arcs Film Festival’s Co-Production Village.

The Co-Production Village will run alongside the festival which will be presided by Ruben Ostlund, the Swedish helmer of Palme d’Or-winning and Oscar-nominated “The Square,” and will open on Dec. 15 with Louis Garrel’s “A Faithful Man.” The movie will compete along with nine films selected by Frederic Boyer, the artistic director of both Les Arcs and Tribeca festivals.

Besides Ostlund, a flurry of high-profile European filmmakers, industry figures and talent are expected to attend the festival, notably Laetitia Casta (“A Faitful Man”), Alex Lutz (“Guy”), Lukas Dhont (“Girl”), Charlotte Le Bon (“The Promise”), Jeremie Renier (“Double Lover”), Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (“Les estivants”), Romain Duris (“Heartbreaker”), Camille Cottin (“Call My Agent!), and Thomas Vinterberg...

20 films selected for Co-Production Village, including 11 first features.

The Les Arcs Film Festival, celebrating its 10th year in 2018, has unveiled its selection of co-production projects for this year’s Industry Village.

Running December 15-18, the event is a financing platform for feature films in development across Europe.

This year, 20 projects have been selected, including a new film from Carla Simon, whose Summer 93 won best first feature at this year’s Berlinale. Her new project Each Of Us is being co-directed with Anne Zohra Berrached and Meritxell Colell and produced by Spain’s Alhena Production.

Also at the event is Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen...

Another year, another Los Angeles Film Festival — only this time it’s different. Well, sort of: Laff made waves when it announced that it was moving from its usual time slot of June to late September, ostensibly to throw its hat in the ever-crowded fall-festival ring; the lineup looks much the same as previous editions, however, and so the change appears to have been largely cosmetic.

Whatever the case, this year’s program features a number of under-the-radar offerings with breakout status, especially when you take a closer look at who’s involved in them. Here’s what to get excited for.

“The Chaperone” (Premieres)

Look, we all miss “Downton Abbey.” The movie adaptation of that beloved comfort-food series is still a year away, so take, well, comfort in the fact that we can at least hold ourselves over with “The Chaperone” for now. Series creator Julian Fellowes wrote the screenplay,...

20 feature films, 17 documentaries and 20 TV dramas set for pitching forum.

A slate of 20 feature films, 17 documentaries and 20 TV dramas have been selected for the pitching session at the fourth edition of the Mia Market in Rome (October 17-21).

Feature Film

This year’s feature film projects, which come from 16 different countries, were selected by Jason Ishikawa (international sales at Cinetic Media), Anne Lai (cirector of creative producing and artist support for the feature film program at the Sundance Institute) and Sophie Mas (producer at Rt Features). Half the projects are directed by women.

Among these are productions that passed through the Sundance Screenwriting lab,...

Film Independent’s Los Angeles event boasts 42% female-directed entries.

Film Independent’s La Film Festival has unveiled the line-ups for five of its sections, with Gregory Dixon’s Olympia, Alex Moratto’s Socrates and Linda Midgett’s Same God among the world premieres.

The festival, which runs from September 20 to 28 this year in Los Angeles, announced 40 features, 41 shorts and 10 episodic shorts from a total of 26 countries.

In competition categories, 42% of the festival titles are directed by women and 39% by people of colour, said Film Independent, the non-profit that also produces the Spirit Awards.

Scroll down for full line-up

Jennifer Cochis,...

The La Film Festival has placed a heavy emphasis on diversity in its competition film slate, with 42% of the films directed by women and 39% helmed by people of color.

The 24th edition of the festival is also positioning itself as an event for unveiling lesser-known talent. It will take place Sept. 20-28 as it moves from its traditional June slot to the fall awards season.

The Los Angeles event follow the Venice International Film Festival, which begins in late August; the Telluride Film Festival, which runs over Labor Day; and the Toronto Intl. Film Festival, which starts on Sept. 6. The festival will end just as the New York Film Festival begins.

“Our mission of finding fresh new voices from different geographical and cultural axes remains true,” said L Film Festival director Jennifer Cochis. “These storytellers are united by their ability to transport, impact and inspire audiences with the power of their craft.

Forty feature films including 24 world premieres highlight the official La Film Festival competition lineup in the fest’s move into the crowded fall festival corridor, away from their previous early-summer perch.

Among the movies in competition is the highly regarded Swedish film Border (Grans) from director Ali Abbasi, a Neon pickup out of Cannes that took the top prize in that festival’s No. 2 competition, Un Certain Regard. It is listed as a “California Premiere,” which means it likely will show up first in Telluride, Toronto or both before Laff, which runs September 20-28. It will play in the World Fiction Competition across a field of categories that also include U.S. Fiction, Documentary, La Muse, Nightfall. Short Films, and Episodes: Indie Series from the web.

“Our mission of finding fresh new voices from different geographical and cultural axes remains true,” Laff Director Jennifer Cochis said. “These storytellers are united by their ability to transport,...

For its 24th edition, Film Independent’s newly configured Los Angeles Film Festival has revealed its first fall lineup (September 20 – 28), the second under the leadership of Festival Director Jennifer Cochis. The date moves Laff into awards season and direct competition with AFI Fest (November 8 – 15), the last of the fall festivals. This year’s Laff program includes 40 feature films, 41 short films, and 10 short episodic works representing 26 countries. Across the competition categories 42 percent of the films are directed by women and 39 percent are directed by people of color.

The festival remains committed to a diverse lineup of feature films, shorts and episodic series for its U.S. Fiction (“original voices with distinct visions from emerging and established American independent filmmakers”), Documentary (“character-driven non-fiction films from the U.S. and around the world”), World Fiction (“unique fiction films from around the world by emerging and established filmmakers”), La Muse (“fiction and documentary films...

For its 24th edition, Film Independent’s newly configured Los Angeles Film Festival has revealed its first fall lineup (September 20 – 28), the second under the leadership of Festival Director Jennifer Cochis. The date moves Laff into awards season and direct competition with AFI Fest (November 8 – 15), the last of the fall festivals. This year’s Laff program includes 40 feature films, 41 short films, and 10 short episodic works representing 26 countries. Across the competition categories 42 percent of the films are directed by women and 39 percent are directed by people of color.

The festival remains committed to a diverse lineup of feature films, shorts and episodic series for its U.S. Fiction (“original voices with distinct visions from emerging and established American independent filmmakers”), Documentary (“character-driven non-fiction films from the U.S. and around the world”), World Fiction (“unique fiction films from around the world by emerging and established filmmakers”), La Muse (“fiction and documentary films...

The Polish film festival will open with ’Capharnaum’ and close with ‘Happy As Lazzaro’.

Nadine Labaki’s Capharnaum will open and Alice Rohrwacher’s Happy As Lazzaro will close the New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw in Poland which runs from July 26 to August 5, 2018.

Bold, uncompromising films by artists seeking new forms of expression are the hallmarks of this year’s main International Competition line-up of 12 titles which includes films from China, the Dominican Republic, Portugal and the Us, said artistic director Marcin Pieńkowski.

The films competing for the New Horizons Grand Prix include award winners from the last editions of the Locarno,...

Polish Days takes place during the New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw.

New films by Bartosz Konopka, Jan Komasa and Leszek Dawid are among the line-up of 25 completed films, works in progress and projects to be presented at the sixth edition of the Polish Days (July 30 - August 1) during the New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland.

Konopka’s The Mute, which was presented as a work in progress at last year’s Polish Days, is among five completed films being shown in closed industry screenings to international sales agents, distributors, film funders and festival programmers.

The further...

‘Europe! Voices Of Women In Film’ will show the work of 10 directors across different genres.

Sydney Film Festival is working again with European Film Promotion (Efp) to present ‘Europe! Voices Of Women In Film’, a strand as part of this year’s event that will highlight ten European women filmmakers.

For the third year of the initiative, festival director Nashen Moodley made the final selection of 10 from 37 films submitted by 23 Efp member organisations. They include feature debuts as well as more established directors.

Emily Atef will bring her award-winning 3 Days In Quiberon to Sydney, while Dutch director Nanouk Leopold will present her latest feature Cobain,...

A family gathering starts tense, turns messy and ends up downright apocalyptic in Polish writer-director Jagoda Szelc's atmospheric but unbearably overwrought debut feature Tower. A Bright Day (Wieza. Jasny dzien). And yes, the title is punctuated by a period rather than a colon, the first part appearing at the beginning of the film — among credits which paradoxically warn that what we're about to see is "based on future events" — the second at the end. What falls between is similarly mannered and arch, a work which shows occasional flashes of talent on various fronts but is ultimately a hollow rehash of...

New projects revealed, including thriller described as “David Lynch meets Ken Loach”.

New films by internationally feted Polish filmmakers Jan Komasa, Kuba Czekaj and Dorota Kedzierzawska were among 20 projects presented to sales agents, distributors and festival programmers at the sixth edition of the Polish Days (8-10 August) during this week’s New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw.

Komasa - who made his feature debut with Suicide Room - and his producer Leszek Bodzak of Aurum Film (The Last Family) pitched the contemporary social drama Corpus Christi which is based on screenwriter Mateusz Pacewicz’s first screenplay for cinema.

The €1m project is being structured as a Polish-French co-production and will begin principal photography in spring 2018.

Bodzak also presented a second feature project, Borys Lankosz’s thriller Dark, Almost Night, which he described as “David Lynch meets Ken Loach”, to begin shooting this autumn with The Last Family’s Dawid Ogrodnik and Aleksandra Konieczna in the cast...

Polish showcase to highlight 26 movies.

Polish Days (August 8 - 10), the showcase of national films at the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival (August 3 - 13) in Wroclaw, Poland, has announced twenty-six titles this year.

Among six completed films are Andrzej Jakimowski’s Once Upon a Time in November and Maciej Sobieszczański’s The Reconciliation.

Eleven films will be presented at the pitchings event while nine films will be presented in the work-in-progress section.

Around 150 guests from Poland and abroad are expected to attend the event in Wrocław, which has been organized since 2013 in co-operation with the Polish Film Institute.

Projects presented in past years include Spoor, The Last Family, The Birds Are Singing in Kigali and All These Sleepless Nights.

New Horizons is being held two weeks later in the calendar this year to accomodate incoming sporting event The World Games, meaning the Polish festival coincides with the Locarno Film Festival for the first time.

Full list of...

Polish Days constitutes the most important industry event at the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival. There, more than 250 movers and shakers of the Polish and international film industry, from producers and film funds to buyers and festival programmers from Berlin, Semaine de la Critique, Rotterdam, Venice, Tribeca and New Directors/New Films, met to watch the latest Polish films at closed screenings. This year, the event took place from July 29 to 31 in the city of Wrocław, Poland.

The 2015 edition focused on funding and German producers. Polish and German film producers met at a conference organized by the Polish Film Institute, the Film Commission of Poland, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (Mdm), Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, German regional funds and the Cottbus Film Festival.

A total of 26 films and projects by both first-time directors and well-established filmmakers were selected for the industry event.

In fact, among the works shown in full at closed screenings were Karlovy Vary competition titles "The Red Spider" by Marcin Koszalkaand "Chemo" by Bartosz Prokopowicz as well as the debut features by Wojciech Kasperski "The High Frontier," "Berlin Diaries" by Przemysław Wojcieszek, "My Sister" by Kinga Dębska and Krzysztof Łukaszewicz’s "Karbala."

As far as the work-in-progress section is concerned, it presented 10 films. These were "Baby Bump" by Kuba Czekaj, "Journals" by Wiktoria Szymańska, "Waves" by Grzegorz Zariczny, "Into the Spirale" by Konrad Aksinowicz, "All These Sleepless Nights" by Michał Marczak and two projects pitched at the festival last year - "Wild Roses" by Anna Jadowska and "Volhynia" by Wojtek Smarzowski. Two documentaries were also presented here: "21 x New York" by Piotr Stasik and "When You Return" by Anna Zamęcka.

Pitchings presented Polish films at an earlier stage of development and production included new works by Marcin Wrona ("Lili"), Dorota Kędzierzawska ("Speedway") and Marcin Dudziak ("Presence"), as well as the following debut features: "The Last Family" by Jan P. Matuszyński, "Tower" by Jagoda Szelc, "Forest" by Joanna Zastróżna and the Cinemart project "Hurrah, we're still alive!" by Agnieszka Polska. Moreover, three projects by foreign directors but developed in Poland were also pitched: "AA" by Jack Faber, "Marie Curie" by Marie Noelle and "People I'm Not" by Francesco Rizzi. Post-production awards from Toya Studios (sound) and Chimney Poland (image) went to "People I'm Not" by Francesco Rizzi, "Tower" by Jagoda Szelc and "Speedway" by Dorota Kędzierzawska.

In the case of "The Last Family," David Ogrodnik, one of the stars of the critically acclaimed hit "Ida," has been cast in the film as Tomek, the son of Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski, played by Andrzej Seweryn, a veteran film and theater actor.

According to Joanna Łapińska, the head of Polish Days and the artistic director of the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival, the program “contains, in equal measure, expressive, original works, along with interesting genre films, moving features, and courageous documentaries.” As far as Agnieszka Odorowicz, the general director of the Polish Film Institute, is concerned, Polish Days has become “one of the most interesting events dedicated to promoting Polish cinema and showcasing film projects in early stages of production. The importance of Polish Days for the international promotion of Polish cinema cannot be overstated. ” Łapińska was adamant on “making it clear” that “Poland is a place for interesting coproductions.”

Polish Days is co-organized with the Polish Film Institute. The event’s partners include the Film Commission of Poland, the Mazovia-Warsaw and Wrocław Film Commissions, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the National Audiovisual Institute and post-production studios Toya Studios and Chimney Poland.

Marcin Koszalka’s The Red Spider among 26 titles in local showcase.Scroll down for full list of films

Polish Days, the showcase of national films at the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, has announced 26 titles this year.

Among six completed films are Karlovy Vary features The Red Spider and Chemo.

Ten films will be presented at the pitchings event - for projects in development and the early stages of production - while nine films will be presented in the work-in-progress strand.

This year’s Polish Days will have a focus on German producers and film funds, including a meeting of Polish and German film producers organised in co-operation with the East German film funds Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (Mdm) and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Cottbus Iff, the Polish Film Institute and Film Commission Poland.

170 guests from Poland and abroad are expected to attend the event in Wrocław, which will take place July 29-31.

Full list of selected...

“Investing in talented European professionals is essential for the competitiveness of the European audiovisual industry” Sari Vartiainen, the Head of Creative Europe – Media Unit said. And this is one of the many purposes of the New Horizons Studio, a workshop for young filmmakers held in the framework of the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival in Wrocław, Poland.

Proving this point, partner festivals, Transilvania International Film Festival, the Locarno Film Festival and Indie Lisboa sent eight of their talents to join the 2014 edition of New Horizons Studio. Among this year’s participants were the laureates of the Young Cinema Competition of the 2013 Gdynia Film Festival, Paweł Maślona with the short film “Magma” and Julia Kolberger with her short “Mazurek” as well. Hasan Serin and Müge Özen participated in the workshop as part of this year’s focus on Turkish cinema. Other participants included Nicolae Constantin Tanase, Stefano Mosimann and Jorge Jácome.

This year was the workshop’s fifth edition. This training program, supported by the EU’s Creative Europe program and the London Film Academy, included workshops on pitching, production, distribution, promotion and consultation. It is the festival’s most important training program, designed “in such a way that each panel [is] more of a discussion than a lecture” so described by Joanna Łapińska, the head of new horizons studio and the artistic director, T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival. Indeed, according to Małgorzata Kiełkiewicz, the director of the creative Europe desk Poland, the New Horizons Studio has become “one of the most creative and practical training environments for young filmmakers across Europe and it has also helped to stimulate cross-border cooperation between audiovisual professionals.”

The workshop was led by experts such as David Pope, Guillaume de Seille, Gavin Humphries, the Dp/director Wojciech Staroń, the producer Małgorzata Staroń, the creative director of the Cork Film Festival James Mullighan, Marc Guidoni and Joanna Szybist, the official delegate for Cannes’ Critics’ Week Raymond Phatanavirangoon, Emre Yeksen and Gülin Üstün.

Moreover, what was interesting is that four of the Polish filmmakers attending the New Horizons Studio this year were also involved in films being presented as part of the Polish Days which presented its program of finished films, works in progress and pitchings. Indeed, Julia Kolberger pitched “Toxaemia”, her adaptation of Małgorzata Rejmer’s eponymous novel; the producer Anna Chojnacka is working at Re Studio Maciej Pieprzyca’s new feature “I’m The Killer”; the producer Zuzanna Król had a closed screening for international guests of “Performer” by Lukasz Ronduda and Maciej Sobieszczanski and the executive producer Agata Walkosz saw Tomas Weinreb and Petr Kazda’s “I, Olga Hepnarova” presented in the Works in Progress selection.

The twenty-four filmmakers hailing from different parts of the Old Continent participating as directors were Kalina Alabrudzińska, Gautier Dulion, Fabien Gorgeart, Jorge Jácome, Julia Kolberger, Paweł Maślona, Jakub Pączek, Stefano Mosimann, Francesco Rizzi, Hasan Serin, Jagoda Szelc, Tomasz Śliwiński, Justyna Tafel, Nicolae Contantin Tanase and Artur Wyrzykowski while those who participated in the capacity of producers were Anna Chojnacka, Paweł Kosuń, Maria Krauss, Zuzanna Król, Müge Özen, Helena Szoda-Woźniak, Klaudia Śmieja, Agata Walkosz and Joanna Zielińska.

Other winners at the cinematography festival in Poland included Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.Scroll down for full list of winners

Competition winners at Camerimage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography, were revealed today as the 21st edition came to a close with a gala awards celebration at the Opera Nova in Bydgoszcz, Poland.

The winner of the top prize - the Golden Frog - went to Polish drama Ida, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, the latest in a string of top awards for the film.

Ida cinematographers Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski accepted the award.

The film stars newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska opposite Polish star Agata Kulesza in the story of a young novitiate nun in 1960s Poland who is on the verge of taking her vows when she discovers a dark family secret dating back to the years of the Nazi occupation.

It marks the first Polish-language film for Warsaw-born British filmmaker Pawlikowski, best known for...