The Kraków Film Festival is one of the oldest European events devoted to documentary, animated and short films. This year’s festival is held for the 61st time!
Justyna Skalska: In 2020, after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the Kraków Film Festival was the first major cultural event in Poland to be held entirely online. Will you be maintaining the virtual formula this year?
Krzysztof Gierat: Yes, the festival will be held in a hybrid format. Film screenings and meetings with artists will be held at Kraków’s cinemas and online, just like last year. In mid-June, we will present selected competition films on our VOD platform. I think that last year we achieved something really great and I’m proud of it, because we delivered a fitting substitute of the most important element of the festival – meetings with the public and interviews – and our audience could participate in open, non-ticketed events including a concert and galas. We worked really hard to prepare the online festival – perhaps even more so than some other major festivals.
Is there a chance that this year’s KFF will be available to audiences in other countries?
No – this is because of restrictions on film distribution in different regions, which is due to copyright laws. Every film has an agent and distributor who buy rights to certain regions. In any case we don’t think this is a problem; we aim to show our films to Polish audiences, since – after all – the festival is still held in Kraków.
The limitations do not apply to representatives of the film industry; they have access to an online library of films from all corners of the globe. Our focus is on promoting Polish cinema.
You’ve just got back from film screenings as part of Berlinale. Have any documentaries caught your eye in particular, and are you planning to bring them to the Kraków Film Festival?
I saw dozens of very different films, including those in the main competition, all of them documentaries. I approached some distributors immediately while others wrote to me, but I can’t say if and which films will be shown in Kraków. Arrangements take time. What I can reveal is that our programme will include the Norwegian, Iranian and Swiss co-production Radiograph of a Family which won the highly prestigious International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam, and Writing With Fire made in India and which was awarded at Sundance and won the audience prize.
This year’s section Focus on… takes us to Norway. Tell us about the country’s cinematography, please.
Scandinavian cinema is fascinating in general, and to be honest it would be difficult to single out Norway in particular, since the countries have a long history of collaborating and hosting joint events such as the Nordisk Panorama. We chose Norway as a way of closing our journey around the Baltic. It’s worth noting that their films explore global rather than just local issues. We have shown Norwegian documentaries at previous festivals, for example The Self Portrait exploring the author’s struggle with anorexia. A few Norwegian productions are included in the main competition, for example Blue Code of Silence, perhaps unexpectedly exploring the corruption of the New York police department in the 1970s. We will also see Radiograph of a Family I mentioned above, and the Norwegian, Finnish and Estonian co-production Life of Ivanna focusing on a woman struggling with life in the far north.
This year marks the centenary of the birth of Stanisław Lem. Is KFF planning on celebrating Poland’s greatest sci-fi writer?
Rather than reaching for screen adaptations of his books or biopics, Karol Jałochowski, curator of the Docs+Science section, prepared a special programme titled Solaris exploring issues of the human mind, dreams, identity, intelligence and emotions. All films will be shown in Poland for the first time.
This year’s Dragon of Dragons is being awarded to Piotr Dumała. What made the jury choose him?
The Programme Board of the Kraków Film Foundation decided to award this year’s main prize to this prestigious animato, and it’s worth stressing that this is the first time in four years that the distinction is going to a Polish filmmaker. Piotr Dumała, one of the youngest winners in the festival’s history, was hugely surprised by the verdict. In cinematic circles, the Dragon of Dragons is seen a bit as a lifetime achievement award.
Piotr Dumała is an extraordinary artist, reaching for different animation techniques and frequently seeking inspiration in literature, for example in his interpretation of Crime and Punishment. He has also made two feature films. We want to present a retrospective of his work during the festival.
Jury members are currently selecting documentaries, short films and animations from Poland and abroad. Will the topic of the pandemic dominate this year’s competitions?
We were mainly worried that we wouldn’t receive many submissions, but this has not been the case. It should also be remembered that many documentaries take a few years to make, so they won’t mention the pandemic, the ubiquitous facemasks or social distancing. We’re bound to see plenty of animations since they are easier to make without needing to leave the studio.
The curators Anita Piotrowska (documentaries), Dagmara Romanowska (features) and Wiola Sowa (animations) and I are working hard not to miss anything. I can reveal that a few Polish productions are included in the international competition. We will see the world premiere of Antihero – a documentary about a man struggling with disabilities and other issues. Despite the difficult topic, the film is cheerful, moving and extremely funny.
Do Polish filmmakers still shy away from tackling difficult issues of the present day?
Yes, there aren’t many films exploring contemporary problems. The main component of contemporary documentaries are strong protagonists and gripping stories. There have even been concerns that it is the jury members of the Kraków Film Festival making these choices. We held a conference bringing together artists, producers, distributors and film critics to a round-table discussion to discuss what happened in Polish documentary-making to cause a shift away from more complex films. Our conclusions are that the problems lie in difficulties in raising funds, fear of censorship, an aversion to creating pieces resembling news stories or simple opportunism. Then again, in the last couple of years we have seen some outstanding documentaries, of which the simple student film My Country So Beautiful was a surprise winner.
The Kraków Film Festival is the only event in Poland with the power to select nominees for the Academy Awards in feature-length documentary and short film categories, and setting recommendations for the European Film Prize in the same categories. Which documentaries chosen in Kraków have been most successful around the globe, and what does this mean for up-and-coming documentary-makers?
A few years ago it was Piotr Stasik’s documentary 21 x New York, two years ago it was Talal Derki’s Of Fathers and Sons, and most recently Radu Ciorniciuc’s Acasa – My Home. I’d also like to add that as well as feature-length documentaries, many of our short films have also been nominated for Oscars, such as Zofia Kowalewska’s Ties. We are proud to be part of a community of prestigious festivals in Cannes, Venice and Locarno in submitting recommendations, and we are delighted that productions shown in Kraków have gone on to win further nominations and awards.
Interview by Justyna Skalska
