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interfilm 2020

PL 03 New Polish Shorts - Mixed Feelings


With a change in the laws regulating film funding and the founding of the Polish Film Institute, 2005 marked a sort of rebirth for Polish cinema, which had descended into a long period of heavy crisis in the 1980s. Whereas the beginning of the 21st century saw the number of annual productions hovering somewhere around five films, by 2015 that number had already risen to more than 50. When Pawel Pawlikowski recieved the Academy Award for his film “Ida” in 2015, it served to underline once again the arduous path that Polish cinema had taken. Over the past several years, with the likes of Jan Komasa, Małgorzata Szumowska, Norman Leto or Olga Chajda, a generation of filmmakers has arisen that is exploring narrative, formal and aesthetic boundaries with a great feel for the medium of film and a sensitivity for society’s discrepancies. In their short films, the individual and collective stand above all as central concepts of a cinema that speaks of contemporary crises as well as those of the past.