"BIRDIE" WINS HBO EUROPE AWARD AT LAST STOP TRIESTE
The documentary project "Birdie", directed by Aneta Ptak, has been awarded the HBO Europe Award during the When East Meets West industry platform. The film is a Polish–Icelandic co-production, produced by Małgorzata Staroń (Staron-Film) and co-produced by the Iceland-based Akkeri Films.
"Birdie" was previously selected for the Last Stop Trieste work-in-progress section, organised in collaboration with the Trieste Film Festival.
This year’s edition of When East Meets West concluded after three intensive days of pitching sessions, works-in-progress presentations, labs, industry meetings, and panel discussions. The event brought together over 650 accredited professionals from more than 60 countries, hosted 750+ one-to-one meetings, and featured 15 parallel activities developed in collaboration with over 100 international partners and institutions.
"Birdie" is a deeply personal and courageous documentary in which the director confronts a series of traumatic events that, within a short time span, radically changed her life. The almost simultaneous loss of her father and the breakdown of her marriage become the starting point for an intimate cinematic journey, in which the camera – instilled in her by her father, a cinematographer – serves as a tool of observation, therapy, and the reclamation of agency. Over the course of several years of filming her own everyday life and emotional states, Aneta gradually uncovers a painful truth about her relationship, coming face to face with mechanisms of manipulation, abuse, and false authority. The film ultimately becomes an act of regaining one’s voice and the right to having one’s own narrative.
You can find out more about the selected projects here.