Andrzej Wajda’s last feature is a biopic about Władysław Strzemiński, the famous Polish avant-garde painter. As much as it’s a celebration of the brilliant work one man made, it also sheds light on the difficulties of Strzemiński’s li...
Arton Review is a project by the Arton Foundation in Warsaw in which Polish artists of the younger generation create film works inspired by the classics of Polish experimental filmmaking and video art. The programme within KINOTEKA fe...
Robert Bolesto’s script takes the famous artistic Beksiński family as inspiration and imagines what the dynamic between the members might have been. The head of the house, Zdzisław the gothic painter, video-records his family over twe...
A deeply touching documentary about the lives of the people who are forced to live in a junkyard in Moscow. The Svalka is the biggest wasteland in Europe and lies just thirteen miles from the Kremlin. Inside the guarded junkyard there...
The story of John Casablancas, the man who introduced supermodels to the world. He started Elite Model Management in Paris in the 1970s which would turn out to be one of the most successful and global names within the fashion industry...
Mitja Okorn brings something a little lighter to New Polish Cinema with Planet Single, a romantic comedy reminiscent of The Proposal (2009) and How To Lose a Guy In 10 Days (2003). The story follows Tome...
Bartosz M. Kowalski presents a psychological thriller in his latest film, Playground. The story starts out innocently enough on the last day of school before summer. Small town girl Gabrysia, played by Michalina Świstuń in he...
Blindness is the true story of Julia Brystiger, an infamous member of security in Stalinist Poland. She had many nicknames throughout her time, but none more enduring than ‘Bloody Luna’, which came about due to the particular...
The story of a journalist who travels to Silesia in search of an author of guidebooks whom he admires. What he finds when he arrives is a house full of weird and wonderful residents, who each seem to live in their own fantastical real...
Generations is a full-length docudrama made for the anniversary of Feature Film Studios (WFF). The Studio produced some four hundred and fifty titles, and of those Zaorski selected the fragments of just under fifty to tell th...
Loosely based on the serial killer (so-called Vampire of Kraków) who tormented Poland in the 1960s, Koszałka’s directorial debut is more of a thriller than biopic, exploring the evil tendencies of people and how they come to be the wo...
In this full-length documentary, Koszałka takes a look at the people who work at a funeral parlour at Kędzierzyn-Koźle and a body incineration centre in Czech Ostrava. The film shows what actually happens to human bodies after death, ...
In this documentary Koszałka looks into the life of one of Poland’s most renowned mountain climbers ‘Mad’ Piotr Korczak. The interviews take place around the time the great mountaineer is coming towards the end of his career, painting...
Koszałka’s first credited piece is a short documentary about his own home life. At the time of filming he was living with his parents who would verbally abuse him everyday. The director is a self-proclaimed neurotic, giving the full c...
An in depth look at the relationship between a 53 year-old man and his mother whom he lives with. After years of life together without any outsiders, he meets a woman and falls in love. Needless to say this causes a rift between him a...
One of Wajda’s lighter works, this is the tale of Bazyli (Tadeusz łomnicki) a handsome, young doctor who is constantly being pursued by beautiful women, and is tired of it. He meets Pelagia (Krystyna Stypułkowska) yet another attracti...
A young film student in 1970s Kraków is working on her diploma film. She focuses on the life of a bricklayer from the 1950s, Mateusz Birkut, who became a proletariat hero by advocating for workers’ rights and housing for everyone. Her...
Following on from Man of Marble (1977) and the story of Mateusz Birkut’s heroism, is the story of his son, Maciej Birkut. A journalist is tasked with finding out what’s really going on with Maciej, the leader of the striking ...
To celebrate the year of Tadeusz Kościuszko we present a historical film about the Battle of Racławice, which was one of the first battles of the Kościuszko Uprising against Russia. The Poles were attacked on two sides by the Russians...
Andrzej Wajda’s last feature is a biopic about Władysław Strzemiński, the famous Polish avant-garde painter. As much as it’s a celebration of the brilliant work one man made, it also sheds light on the difficulties of Strzemiński’s li...
A startling commentary about the ugly side of capitalism. Three unlikely friends band together to start a factory business in Łodz during the manufacturing revolution. Though the trio is successful after many obstacles, struggles and ...
Janusz Majewski’s latest film is a blast back to the swinging 50s of Poland. It follows Fabian (Maciej Stuhr) as he returns to Poland from England and forms a swing band. It turns out to be much more successful than anyone had anticip...
Some texts cannot be translated, some fail altogether, some give us an idea of the original but suggest something else in the process. For the Themersons, the idea of translation was not only possible but also natural, whether from on...
An intensive 3-day programme aimed at directors, writers and creative producers with proven experience (credits on shorts or first low-budget features) who are adapting source material for the screen / working on an adaptation project...
Oscar-nominated animator, director and master of digital SFX Tomasz Bagiński received the BAFTA for Best Short Animation in 2006 for Fallen Art. His skills in blending live action with animation have made him sought after in ...
Set in the stylish 20s, the story follows Viktor (Daniel Olbrychski), a successful young man, who none-the-less decides to take some time off work to process the death of a friend. He goes back to his home town, where he encounters a ...
Jakubowksa’s horrific semi-autobiographical story of being taken prisoner at Auschwitz. As she and the other prisoners await for the Red Army to free them, we get a glimpse of the reduced circumstances the women of Auschwitz had to li...
A film about Kornel, a boy whose whole world is turned upside down when one night a mysterious figure climbs through the window into his room. It turns out to be his crazy uncle Dionizy who claims to be on the trail of a family treasu...
Wajda’s first full length film is a heartfelt look at the effect of war on the adolescents who are moulded in it and how it sets their entire lives on a needless path of suffering. Stach (Tadeusz Łomnicki) is a young man working as an...
Here Jakubowska looks at the Holocaust once more, but from the perspective of Polish slave labourers made to work in a German man’s factory. There is a great sense of community that arises from the group over their shared experience a...
Kanal is the frustrating story of a group of forty-three men and women fighting during the last days of the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazis in World War II. After struggling for so long as a united force, the resistance and...
One of the few war stories to begin on the last day of a war. Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is ordered to assassinate Szczuka (Wacław Zastrzeżyński), and though he has killed many during the war, Szczuka is not an easy one for Maciek, wh...
Celebrating the 15th anniversary of KINOTEKA Polish Film Festival, the Polish Cultural Institute in London and the Barbican Centre present a unique, specially commissioned show by much loved art rock sextet British Sea Power playing l...