In my life as a journo and festival programmer, I’ve been to Cannes to catch a bit of the limelight. I’ve swanned around Berlin at the height of the film festival. I’ve even enjoyed the hospitality of Venice. Yet it’s Krakow that keeps enticing me back year after year. Partly it’s the fact that the city is beautiful. It’s also due to the excellent people I have got to know there over the past few years. Most importantly it’s the fact the Krakow Film Festival continues to offer a diverse range of films that – while offering some crossover – allow audiences to see something quite different from those that often make the rounds on the documentary and festival circuit. With this year’s festival being the 49th edition, there is a weight of history behind the event that gives the festival its rather special atmosphere. Oh, and the fact that Wisla Krakow won the Polish football Premiere League during the course of the festival added a certain party atmosphere to proceedings…
Those not used to Krakow may find the programme a little strange. The International Competition – screening documentaries, shorts and animations – is wide and diverse but not without its pitfalls for the unsuspecting viewer. A programmer which can consist of a 50-minute documentary, followed by a two-minute animation, a 15-minute drama and so on and so forth can prove little disconcerting when you’re used to programmes of similar films of a similar length. Once you get past this (and, as a seven-year veteran of the festival, I am now used to the programming style) then the rewards are abundant.
In the International Competition, the documentaries were by far the strongest category with Pizza In Auschwitz an immensely powerful (and, given the subject matter, poignant) winner of the Golden Dragon (the top prize for the section). Moshe Zimerman’s film follows Danny Chanoch, a survivor of five concentration camps during the Holocaust, who decides to return to the sites of his terrible experiences. Bringing his adult children with him, with some hope of making them understand what he went through, this is raw and visceral throughout with an undercurrent of black humour courtesy Chanoch and family. It’s a demonstration of how the victims of the Holocaust included future generations too, as Chanoch’s daughter narrates, telling us how she doesn’t want to go. The only way she can understand her father is by going through what he went through – but she never can. With some truly astonishing scenes (including Chanoch’s confrontation with a staff member of the Auschwitz museum and, later, his angry words with two German youths who have visited the site to confront their own past), this is an important account of the true toll that the camps placed on those who were said to have ‘survived’.
Other stand out documentaries included Poste Restante, a winner in both the National and International competitions. At first sight a documentary in the vein of Night Mail set in the office of unsent mail, it becomes something more lyrical and beautiful as the film continues. To say anymore would spoil it, but it’s worth checking your local film festival listings for a screening. The same goes for Wagah, a fun and immensely well-shot film about patriotism. Every day on the Pakistan and Indian border, an elaborate ceremony is held to open the gates between the two and give audiences on either side a chance to glimpse the other (or the Other). It’s a wonderful paean to the love of country with the need for jingoism. Mention must also be given to Red Sands, David Procter’s neutral examination of bullfighting and the Pamplona festival. Those who look past some of the brutal scenes with animals will see another well crafted and unique documentary that marks out Procter as a major UK talent to look out for over the coming years.
Onto the fiction films, which were a trifle weak. However, there were still plenty to enjoy if you looked hard enough. The UK films, in particular both Lamb and Jade (both produced by Duane Hopkins, the director of recent British film Better Things) being brilliantly constructed narratives that relied on imagery as opposed to dialogue to create films stunning in their cinematography and emotional depth. Leaving, a winner of the Silver Dragon for Best Fiction, was also a powerfully acted piece dealing with domestic abuse and yet another feather in the cap for UK filmmaking. Lost Days Office had a powerful conceit – that of an office that would find the moments you have lost in time via the years of CCTV footage they possess – but lost it with a too-long running time; whilst Finding was a slick and glossy thriller which, though mindlessly enjoyable, was the epitome of what one would describe as a ‘calling card film’.
The animations were also a mixed bag with Ten, the winner of the Silver Dragon Award for Best Animation, being a (rather gruesome) special effects extravaganza about a man who is afraid to step on the cracks of the pavement. The animation is indeed amazing but for me the highlight was Skhizein, a unique French film about a man who is forced to live 91cm away from himself. It’s a great piece of cinema partly because it is so difficult to describe in words: you really need to see it to appreciate the wealth of clever ideas and intricate animation that has gone into creating the film. The latest film of The Quay Brothers, Inventorium of Traces, was something of a disappointment – all the elements were there with their usual brand of surrealistic and finely crafted animation, but it felt a little bit ‘business as usual’ and failed to really make itself stand out.
There was also a National Competition dominated by documentaries (though if you looked hard enough there were a few excellent animations and fiction films, including the wonderfully nihilistic Uncle and the disturbing Echo, and a Feature Length Documentary Competition (fast becoming a focal point of the festival). There was also a retrospective of Krakow artist and animator Jerzy Kucia, who received the Dragon of Dragons – the highest honour of the festival that has preciously been conferred on the likes of Werner Herzog, Albert Maysles and Jan Svankmajer).
As the festival prepares for its 50th anniversary next year, it should be fiercely proud of its past but look towards the future. With an increasing number of important festivals in the country, and indeed in central and eastern Europe, it will become harder for Krakow to stand out from the crowd. Yet, with the Festival Market gaining in prestige and attendance, and an increasing number of international guests and interesting panel discussions focusing on various issues such as distribution in short films, the Krakow Film Festival is keeping its reputation as one of the most important and prestigious in the world.
As I leave with films in my head, perogi in my stomach and – to be honest – too much vodka in my bloodstream, the Krakow Film Festival has once again managed to impress. I think 50 years is going to be one hell of a party.
The full list of winners, and more information about the festival, can be found at the official site.
Laurence Boyce would like to thank Anna D, Anna Dz, Anna Z, Barbara, Daniela, Jarek, Justyna, Kasia, Krzysztof, Magda and all others from the festival staff who have – as always – been welcoming and brilliant under pressure. Thanks also to Dave, Chris, Jan, Christoffer, Allessandro, Liz and Charlie for hanging out when the films weren’t on.
