Takeshi Kitano's Dolls won the Grand Prix at the third Era New Horizons Film Festival (July 17 - 27) in Cieszyn, southern Poland.

Among other competition entries which received high scores, voted by the audience, were Patrice Cherau's Son Frere, Rolf de Heer's Alexandra's Project, Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark and Samira Makhmalbaf's At Five In The Afternoon.

Festival organiser, Gutek Film, will distribute the seven most popular competition entries, which will be released in January 2004 as the ERA NEW HORIZONS SERIES.

The festival boasted 207 screenings of 153 feature films and 86 short films from 37 countries. In total, the festival sold 56,000 tickets compared to last year's 40,000.

Apart from the competition the festival included a retrospective of Derek Jarman films; a tribute to Japanise maveric Shinja Tsukamoto, who visited Cieszyn; a presentation of films by Canadian director Peter Mettler (Gambling, Gods And LSD) who was present at the event and conducted a master class; a focus on French cinema, American independent films and Latin American cinema.

The fourth Era New Horizons Film Festival will be held in Cieszyn from July 22 to August 1, 2004.