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KRAKOW 2021

European docs dominate the programme of the Krakow Film Festival

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- The oldest Polish festival will take place both off- and online between 30 May and 6 June

European docs dominate the programme of the Krakow Film Festival
The Red Ring by Joonas Berhall

As Poland is slowly reopening after weeks of lockdown, with cinemas scheduled to be operating again no later than 29 May, the Krakow Film Festival, celebrating its 61st edition this spring, has announced its selection.

This year, the gathering will take place both in physical form and virtually, hopefully inaugurating an entire offline festival season in Poland. Due to the pandemic, the programme of the event was slightly altered, but is still sticking to its core elements – the International Competition, the National Competition, the Short Films Competition and the Industry event, simply called KFF Industry.

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The Documentary competition, which has invited 16 international films, will celebrate three world premieres – The Red Ring by Joonas Berhall (Finland), No Hero at All by Michał Kawecki (Poland) and Walk with Angels by Tomasz Wysokiński (Poland) — and three international premieres – Far Easter Golgotha by Julia Sergina (Russia), Children of the Enemy by Gorki Glaser-Müller (Sweden, Denmark) and the mid-length film Dad Shot Them by Per Anders Rudelius (Sweden). The remaining ten films, which will have local premieres, are: North by Current by Angelo Madsen Minax (USA), the mid-length film The Wheel by Nomin Lkhagvasuren (Mongolia), Blue Code of Silence by Magnus Skatvold and Gregory Mallozzi (Norway), Writing with Fire by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh (India), The Man Who Paints Water Drops by Oan Kim and Brigitte Bouillot (France, South Korea), Radiograph of a Family by Firouzeh Khosrovani (Norway, Iran, Switzerland), Inside the Red Brick Wall which is a collective work by Hong Kong documentary filmmakers (Hong Kong), Lobster Soup by Pepe Andreu (Spain, Iceland, Lithuania) and Life of Ivanna by Renato Borrayo Serrano (Russia, Norway, Finland, Estonia). 

The National Competition has 28 entries, comprising documentaries of all three lengths: full, medium and short. Among them is 1970 by Tomasz Wolski, a festival regular attendee and a winner (Ordinary Country, Festival, Doctors) and Zofia Kowalewska, whose mid-length Only The Wind is a follow-up to her short Close Ties, which was on the Oscars shortlist in 2017.

The Krakow Film Festival programme is concluded by non-competitive sections – Panorama of the Polish Documentary Film, Docs+Science, Kids&Youth, Short Matter!, Focus on Norway,  Sound of Music, Festival Award Winners, Student Films, World Stories, Somewhere in Europe and a retrospective of the Dragons Awards, which is a lifetime achievement prize, presented this year to Piotr Dumała.

The full list of the competition films is available on the festival website, while the non-competitive titles will be announced in May.

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