POLISH PROJECTS AT AGORA DURING THE THESSALONIKI DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL
Several Polish projects have been selected for the prestigious industry event AGORA, which will take place on 8-12 March 2026 during the 28th Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival.
For years, AGORA has been recognised as the most important and dynamic documentary forum in Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean region, constituting an international meeting point for professionals working on documentary films at all stages of production.
This year's edition of the Thessaloniki Pitching Forum is going to feature a total of 14 documentary projects in development from 17 countries, including from Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and Tunisia. The selected projects address themes related to forced migration, mental health, interpersonal relationships, abuse of power, and revealing silenced histories.
Amongst them is the project No Mother's Land, directed by Wiktoria Szymańska-Davis and produced by Monika Braid (Braidmade Films) in co-production with Sonja Henrici (Sonja Henrici Creates). The project is a Polish-British co-production. The film tells the story of a mother wrongly accused of abducting her own daughter, pursued by a former partner who weaponises the legal system as an instrument of violence. Trapped in a web of surveillance and endless court proceedings, the woman lives in hiding for eight years, fighting for her child's safety, her own mental health, and freedom.
Poland also marks its presence in AGORA XR Lab, a section devoted to immersive projects. The programme features five selected XR works which – through myth, memory, and personal experience – dicuss loss, exile, and psychological resilience. These projects utilise immersive worlds, AI-assisted narratives, and fragmentary memories of war and displacement, demonstrating how the past shapes identity, relationships, and space.
One of the selected projects is Nothing Is Ever Really Lost, created by Anna Szylar and produced by Pola Komarowa (Monster Mind Studio). The project represents Poland and will be shown internationally as part of the growing current of XR narrative in documentary film.
Inspired by lines from a poem by Walt Whitman, the installation unfolds inside an immersive, darkened space where the viewer – surrounded by a constellation of CRT monitors and a digital tablet – witnesses an intimate conversation between a daughter and her mother's digital doppelgänger. This avatar has been generated by an AI model trained on personal diaries and letters.
The project is situated at the intersection of grief and technology: 17 years after her mother's death, Lauren returns to the family archive – handwritten journals, VHS cassettes, and letters – attempting to hear anew the voice of a woman whose sensitivity was suppressed by depression and anxiety for many years. This mixed-reality experience explores memory, loss, and the possibility of digitally extending one's presence, posing the question of what truly vanishes and what endures once recorded.
The presence of Polish projects in both the pitching section and the XR lab confirms the strong and multifaceted position of Polish documentary on the international industry scene and its active participation in the search for new forms of storytelling about the contemporary world.
You can find out more about the selected projects here.