DOCS TO GO! - REPORT

This year, within the frames of Docs to go! twelve films were presented, almost finished but still in need of support, mainly in post-production and distribution.

This year, within the frames of Docs to go! twelve films were presented, almost finished but still in need of support, mainly in post-production and distribution. During the pitching, the representatives of the film and television industry gathered there could watch extensive fragments of the films as well as the first trailers. The films preparing to be born are very different as far as subject matter and the way of telling the story are concerned.

"The end of the Valley of Tears" by Jarosław Wszędybył (who also showed "The Springtime of Dragons") is a story about the last colony for lepers in Europe, located in Tichilesti in Romania, a place which is erased from the map of this country every time the authorities want to get rid of it from the public awareness.  Year by year, the population of the colony gets smaller, at present it amounts only to fifteen people. The disappearance of space is also the subject of the film "At the bottom of the sea" by Marcin Sauter, whose short, poetic "The Source" was shown at the previous edition of Krakow Film Festival. His latest film tells about the drying Aral Sea, and how this process fundamentally changed the lives of the inhabitants of the old seaside areas. The film will attempt to reconstruct the image of nature, preserved in human memory.

The relationship of an ex-gangster Piotr, just released from prison, and the illustrator Magda, shown in the film "Walking Spark," which promises to be psychologically interesting. Magda wants to depict Piotr's life in a form of an artistic comic book, starting from his difficult childhood, to the criminal period, to which the character himself refers in an ambivalent way: it is his trauma and at the same time, the time of real friendships.

Polish viewers look forward to seeing the new look at the festival in Jarocin. "Jarocin - The rise of freedom" is a work of the duet:  Marek Gajczak and Leszek Gnoiński (who has already made a documentary film about Polish rock music: "Beats of freedom"). The whole film will be ready before the end of 2015. Among the presented films, there is also the found footage film "Trophy," edited from amateur recordings made by Polish tourists "White cube" – the image of a human and a machine competing in sculpting in stone and the atmospheric "21x New York," a story about the lives of people accidentally met in the subway, which visually resembles some films by John Cassavetes.

A really surprising film is "When you return" by Anna Zamęcka.  Complicated story of the children: Ola and Nikodem demands from the director an extremely gentle approach. Anna Zamęcka, together with the producers: Anna Wydra from Otter Films and Zuzanna Król-Maziarzewską from Wajda Studio are well on their way towards making an outstanding film.

Michał Kucharczyk

phot. Tomasz Korczyński