IDFA UNVEILS PART OF ITS PROGRAMME. FIRST POLISH TITLES ANNOUNCED
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam has begun unveiling this year’s programme. Among the first announced titles connected to Polish cinema are Klaudia Szott’s “MIX”, Andrei Kutsila’s “Letters from the Silenced Country”, Michał Marczak’s “Closure” and Paweł Łoziński’s “The Balcony Movie”.
Founded in 1988, IDFA is one of the world’s leading international institutions dedicated to documentary cinema. Its activities include a festival of films and new media, funding initiatives, industry markets, talent development and educational programmes. The institution also runs a year-round documentary hub in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark.
The Best of Fests section, presenting outstanding films previously screened at festivals around the world, will feature Klaudia Szott’s 24-minute documentary “MIX”. Its protagonist is Sylwia Achu, the daughter of a Polish mother and a Nigerian father, who searches for traces of her own identity in the archives of the Łódź Film School. Films made during the Cold War by students from the Global South become the starting point for a personal story composed of archival images and the protagonist’s memories.
Two more titles have been selected for Signed, a section showcasing new films by directors with distinctive authorial voices. One of them is Andrei Kutsila’s “Letters from the Silenced Country”, a portrait of contemporary Belarus told through the experiences of people affected by imprisonment, repression and exile. The director combines personal testimonies, archival and found footage, as well as animation based on drawings made in prison. The film had its world premiere at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, where it received The Impact Golden Globes Prize for Documentary presented by Artemis Rising Foundation.
The Signed section will also feature Michał Marczak’s “Closure”. The film follows Daniel, whose sixteen-year-old son Krzysztof disappears without a trace after being captured by a surveillance camera on a bridge over the Vistula River. His father embarks on a months-long search, while Marczak focuses not on solving the mystery of the disappearance, but on a family living in a state of uncertainty, suspended between hope and fear.
Paweł Łoziński’s “The Balcony Movie” will also return to Amsterdam, this time as part of the special programme Dead Angle: Common Ground, devoted to different forms of community, solidarity and encounters in public space. From the balcony of his apartment, the director points his camera at a Warsaw sidewalk and strikes up conversations with passers-by, turning a series of chance encounters into a polyphonic portrait of contemporary society.
More information can be found here.