Tomek is the man who has it all in Slovenian born director Mitja Okorn’s 2016 rom-com Planeta Singli. Set in Poland, it features a celebrated chat show host with a cult following, Tomek (Maciej Stuhr), who not only has a successful career but also women falling at his feet. Yet clearly there’s also something lacking…
| 02/04/2017
Wanda Jakubowska’s The Last Stage (Ostatni Etap) is one of the world’s earliest feature films about the Holocaust, premiering in Poland as early as March 1948. It’s also a personal narrative: partly based on Jakubowska’s own experiences at Birkenau women’s camp at Auschwitz, The Last Stage chronicles life in the camp from a personal angle, filmed on…
| 02/04/2017
Death doesn’t always put things in perspective, at least not when art is involved. Were it not the last project by one of the 20th century’s great filmmakers, Powidoki, (Afterimage) might have made a respectful turn on the international film circuit before fading into genteel obscurity. With the passing of Andrzej Wajda last year this…
| 29/03/2017
In some ways it may come as a surprise to discover that a film as bizarre as The Last Family (Ostatnia Rodzina) is based firmly on reality, detailing the life of the internationally acclaimed Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski. On the other hand, perhaps the absurdity of it all strikes a bit too close to home to…
| 25/03/2017
Janusz Majewski’s film The Eccentrics (Excentrycy) bagged several awards at the Polish Academy Awards in 2016, including best supporting actor and actress (Wojciech Pszoniak and Anna Dymna), and best film score. Least surprising is the latter, given that it’s a musical comedy, which focuses on a Jazz Big Band in 1950s communist Poland. Fabian Apanowicz…
| 25/03/2017
In 80 Million, the 2011 film from Waldemar Krzystek, Ocean’s 11 meets the Solidarity Movement in 1980s Poland. It’s fast paced, witty, fun and easy, yet driven by an idealism which the American blockbuster lacks. Directed by Waldemar Krzystek in 2011, it’s set the tone for a new way of approaching Poland’s experience of communism. ‘We didn’t…
| 23/03/2017
The Little Prince – the classic novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – is about a pilot stranded in the Sahara desert, visited there by a child, the Little Prince of the title. The two form a friendship, and The Pilot learns of the life of his visitor, who hails from a tiny asteroid, in turn…
| 22/03/2017
Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl collected the testimonies of survivors from the nuclear disaster: military personnel, medical professionals, and, most importantly, ordinary people. Her book is a series of stories that tell the untold: how little the people in the Soviet Union, and especially the Ukraine and Belarus, knew about what happened the night the…
| 12/03/2017
Endless train timetables. Russian border patrol. Patches of forest that swallow you up. A thick fog that brings it memories of a time long gone. Anything but an ordinary film, Tomáš Luňák’s interpretation of Jaromir99’s graphic novel trilogy about the train dispatcher Alois Nebel is a full-length, animated drama, playing at a pivotal moment…
| 07/03/2017
In ‘Neon’, Eric Bednarski’s award-winning 2014 documentary, the history of Warsaw is traced through its neon lights. It’s a retelling of Polish history, mixing documentary features from several decades, focusing in on small stories alongside the great events of the recent past. We caught up with the Director here. CEEL: How did you come to choose neon…
| 25/02/2017