19/08/2014 - Filmmakers Zuzanna Solakiewicz and Piotr Zlotorowicz were awarded at the Swiss festival, which drew to a close last weekend

15 Corners of the World by Zuzanna Solakiewicz

The Poles have come home from the Locarno International Film Festival with two prizes. Zuzanna Solakiewicz, the director of 15 Corners of the World [+see also:
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film profile], received the Critics' Week Award (jointly awarded to Damien Froidevaux’s La Mort du Dieu Serpent), while Piotr Zlotorowicz’s Mother Earth enjoyed a Special Mention awarded by the judging panel Cinema & Gioventù from the Pardi di domani competition.

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In 15 Corners of the World, it’s not so much the images that guide the audience as the sound, which takes on the lead role. This film, a kind of visual and audio collage, reflects the world of Studio Expérimental of Polish Radio. At the heart of this feature-length documentary is Eugeniusz Rudnik - a character born in 1933, a Polish sound engineer and composer who has, since the 1950s, created his compositions based on fragments of analogue recordings on tape, using glue and scissors. The film is a co-production between Endorfina Studio and the German firm Hupe Films.

Piotr Zlotorowicz’s final film as a student, Mother Earth, won out over a total of 26 productions selected in the Pardi di domani competition. As the tutors of the Lodz School of Cinema - also the producers of the film - pointed out, this feature has undertones of poetic mysticism clearly inspired by Tarkovski. Nicolás Villegas Hernández’s photography showcases the relationship between a father and son. The boy longs to fulfill the dream of his father by working as a butcher, but he suffers from an overwhelming feeling of sensitivity which prevents him from hurting animals. 

(Translated from French)