Feature projects by Agata Trzebuchowska, Adrian Panek and Olga Chajdas are among 21 films to be presented at the 15th edition of the Polish Days, the industry programme of the New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw later this month.
The festival is taking place from July 23 – August 2, incorporating Polish Days from July 26-28.
Actress Trzebuchowska’s directorial debut Sick, which had been presented at last year’s Polish Days as a work in progress under the previous title of Ties, is one of three completed films to be shown in closed screenings to an international audience of sales agents, distributors and festival programmers.
The psychological horror film penned by Trzebuchowska, whose acting credits include the title role in Pawel Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winning Ida, centres on a 16-year-old boy who is sent to the countryside to care for his ailing grandmother and unexpectedly falls in love with his older sister.
The showcase will also include Eliza Godlewska and Alan Ruczyński’s debut feature A Free Woman, starring Ewa Konstancja Bulhak as a 50-year-old woman going through the most difficult time in her life as she pursues her greatest dream of having a new home, and Marta Giec’s psychological horror film OPI, about three generations of women, bound together by a dark, intergenerational secret. They are played by five leading Polish actresses
Works in progress
Meanwhile, Adrian Panek’s biopic WANDA about Wanda Rutkiewicz, one of the greatest female mountaineers in history and the first Polish woman to conquer the world’s highest peaks, is one of the films selected as works-in-progress.
The eight films in this showcase also include Aga Woszczyńska’s drama Black Water, set on an island in the Baltic Sea when the husbands of two vacationing couples mysteriously disappear in the middle of a sudden ecological disaster.
This is the director’s second feature after her award-winning debut Silent Land, which had its world premiere in Toronto in 2021 and was also produced by Lodz-based Lava Films.
In addition, Agnieszka Zwiefka will be showing footage from her fiction feature debut She, co-written with the actress Jowita Budnik, who also stars in the film as a 50-year-old woman whose life is turned upside down when her favourite tree is felled.
The move to fiction comes after Zwiefka’s acclaimed documentaries such as Silent Trees, Vika!, and The Queen of Silence, and also marks another collaboration with German producer Heiner Deckert of ma.ja.de. film.
Moreover, Tomasz Habowski will be returning to Wroclaw this year to show scenes from his comedy drama Radioamateur about grief, loneliness and the courage to begin again, which won the Wroclaw Feature Film Studio Award of postproduction services when it was pitched as a project at last year’s Polish Days.
Development
The 10 projects in development being pitched to potential production partners include Olga Chaidas’ latest feature film Tribe, a darkly comic Balkan road movie about female rage, grief and improvised solidarity, which will first be presented as part of Karlovy Vary’s Central Stage showcase at the beginning of July.
This section’s line-up also features Michał Chmielewski’s second feature The Neighborhood which follows his debut Roving Woman which was executive produced by Wim Wenders and had its world premiere at Tribeca in 2022; Dawid Nickel’s Toxic about a young man’s search for his sexual identity in an environment filled with toxic masculinity; and Japanese filmmaker Kei Ishikawa returning to Poland where he studied at the National Film School in Lodz for his next feature film project Excursion with Lava Films as producer.
Weronika Czołnowska, head of industry events at New Horizons, said more than 90 international guests have confirmed their attendance at this year’s edition of Polish Days. They include programmers from festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Venice, Berlinale, Locarno and Cottbus as well as sales agents and potential co-producers.
Moreover, various industry partners such as No Problemo Music, Wroclaw Feature Film Studio and Fixafilm are providing monetary or in-kind awards of production and production services with value totalling more than 280,000 Zlotys to go to projects presented at the Polish Days.
The industry platform can point to several success stories of films that were pitched in Wroclaw, went into production and then travelled around the international festival circuit, including Screen International Best Pitch Award winners Woman On The Roof and Prime Time, as well as Sweat, The Last Family, The Peasants, Bread and Salt, and Corpus Christi.
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