23/06/2008

Grzegorz Pacek’s debut feature, Wednesday, Thursday Morning picked up the Great Jantar Award at the 27th Koszalin "Mlodzi i Film" (Youth and Cinema) Debut Film Festival, which closed on June 21.

Pacek’s debut narrative feature centres on a young couple who are both lost and lonely (Pawel Tomaszewski and Joanna Kulig, who was nominated Best Young Actress at Gdynia Film Festival in 2007). Moreover, Wednesday, Thursday Morning is set at a significant time in Polish history – August 1, 1944, the start of the Warsaw Uprising.

The film was lensed by Bogumil Godfrejow, who is acclaimed for his work on Slawomir Fabicki’s Retrieval [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile].

Presided by Wojciech Marczewski, the Official Competition jury also honoured Beata Hyczko, who won Best Screenplay for Tomasz Drozdowicz’s Fur; and DoP Tomasz Michalowski who won Best Cinematography for Dariusz Jablonski’s Strawberry Wine.

As for acting awards, Kulig scooped Best Female Newcomer for Pacek’s Wednesday, Thursday Morning and Tomaszewski won Best Actor for the same film.

Finally, a special mention was awarded to Bodo Kox for the "humour, irony and creative determination" of his film Nie panikuj ("Don’t Panic").

At the festival’s closing ceremony, audiences paid tribute to the memory of Piotr Lazarkiewicz, who died of a heart attack on June 20, at the age of 54. Having worked as assistant director on films by Agnieszka Holland and Krzysztof Zanussi, Lazarkiewicz also made his own features, including Kocham kino (1986), Departure (1991) and A Time for Witches(1995). His new film, 0-1-0 – which he had just finished editing – will be unveiled in July at the Era New Horizons Film Festival.

(Translated from French)