One of the largest doc­u­ment­ary film fest­ivals – IDFA — starts in a month in the Neth­er­lands. Among the qual­i­fied films there are sev­eral Pol­ish ones.

22^nd Inter­na­tional Doc­u­ment­ary Film Fest­ival Ams­ter­dam will last from 19^th to 29^th Novem­ber. It will be opened by Dari­usz Jabłoński’s film “War Games” whose prot­ag­on­ist Col­onel Rysz­ard Kuk­liński, from 1971 to 1981, trans­ferred over 40 thou­sand pages of the most secret doc­u­ments of the Warsaw Pact to the West­ern coun­tries. Jabłoński’s doc­u­ment­ary will com­pete for the main prize of the full-​feature films con­test. His earlier film, “Pho­to­grapher”, received the 1998 Joris Ivens award in Amsterdam.

„Six Weeks” by Mar­cin Janos Kraw­czyk is included in the short doc­u­ment­ary film con­test. The films tells a story of an unwanted child in the first six weeks of its life. Dur­ing this time, the bio­lo­gical mother should take the final decision of giv­ing up her par­ental rights, which is the only way to make it pos­sible for the child to become adop­ted. The show in Ams­ter­dam will be the film’s world premiere. Krawczyk’s earlier film, “Ren­dez–​Vous”, was shown on the most import­ant film events, among oth­ers, in Ber­lin, Toronto, Wash­ing­ton, Kosovo, New York, Paris, Banja Luca, Zagreb, Kar­love Vary and Munich.

„Where the Sun doesn’t rush” by Matej Bobrik will start in the Ams­ter­dam stu­dents’ con­test. This film, filled with black humour, is a por­trait of a Slovak vil­lage – a dying-​out world, where funer­als are the main source of enliven­ing. It has already been suc­cess­ful at the fest­ivals in Nyon, Peter­bor­ough and Minsk, and soon it will be shown to the view­ers in Leipzig and Madrid.

Poland has a strong rep­res­ent­a­tion on the Docs for Sale fair, includ­ing “The Lucky Ones”, “Chemo”, “Unem­ployed”, “Andrzej Wajda: Let’s Shoot!”, “Six Weeks” and “Where the Sun doesn’t rush”. All films will be shown in Ams­ter­dam as POL­ISH DOCS pro­ject. This is a com­mon enter­prise of Krakow Film Found­a­tion and Pol­ish Film Insti­tute, whose main aim is to increase the num­ber of Pol­ish doc­u­ment­ar­ies present at the most import­ant film fest­ivals abroad, and to pro­mote this film genre among the inter­na­tional trade environment.

Docs for Sale doc­u­ment­ary mar­ket is the most import­ant event of this type on the world. Every year, over 250 TV chan­nels’ rep­res­ent­at­ives, dis­trib­ut­ing com­pan­ies and fest­ival select­ors come to Ams­ter­dam for the Fest­ival. On 60 stands, they have an oppor­tun­ity to watch all qual­i­fied films, which are, for over 10 years, avail­able for the traders also on the Inter­net all year long.

www​.idfa​.nl

(17.10.2009)