About the program

film list

screening schedule

The Most Important Sections at the 16th T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival in Wrocław

This year's T-Mobile New Horizons Festival will be held July 21-31. Some 393 films will be screened, including 221 full-length features-94 of which will be shown for the first time in Poland-from more than 50 countries. Screenings will be held at the New Horizons Cinema and on Wroclaw's Market Square, while special events will be held in the recently opened National Forum of Music. Hosting the event for the 11th time is the city of Wrocław European Capital of Culture 2016, while T-Mobile Poland SA will be the Festival's official partner for the 14th time. The most important sections at the festival will be as follows:

Festival competitions with Polish premieres

The New Horizons International Competition will be showing 10 original, unconventional films that aim to find new forms of expression. These include several productions that will be shown in Poland for the first time. One of the films competing for the Grand Prix will be Michal Marczak's All These Sleepless Nights, a pulsating portrait of young urban revelers that took home the award for best director at the Sundance Film Festival (European premiere). Also taking part in the competition is Ederly, a live-action feature film by a master of animation, Peter Dumała, about a town teetering between a dream and reality (world premiere).

Creative documentaries and docufiction about art, music, and culture will compete for awards in the Films on Art International Competition. This year's competition includes films about how art and life are interwoven, and how contemporary artists turn events from their daily lives into works of art. The section features several portraits of prominent and often controversial artists, including Tomer Heymann's Mr Gaga, about one of the most innovative contemporary choreographers in the world, Israel's Ohad Naharin; Burden (dir. Timothy Marrinan, Richard Dewey), about an American extreme performance artist; the winner of a Casa Rossa Art Doc Award at the Italian Bellaria Festival, Nicola Costantino: The Artefakta (dir. Natalie Cristiani), about an Argentinian visual artist who creates art with her own body; and Belle de nuit - Grisélidis Real, Self Portraits (dir. Marie-Ève de Grave), about a rebellious Swiss writer, painter, socio-political activist, and prostitute who died in 2005.

The festival program also includes other competition sections: the Polish Short Films Competition sponsored by T-Mobile and the European Short Films Competition. The third edition of the Zoom Competition will once again be showing films and videos made by filmmakers and visual artists from Lower Silesia, including a story about a Czech mass murderer, I, Olga Hepnarová, directed by Tomáš Weinreb and Petra Kazda with Polish actress Michalina Olszańska in the title role. Prizes for the section were funded by Wrocław European Capital of Culture 2016 and the Audiovisual Technology Center in Wrocław.

Acclaimed filmmakers and festival winners

The competition sections will be presenting films by promising new filmmakers, while the Panorama and Ale kino+ sections will be featuring award-winning productions from prestigious festivals by acclaimed directors and recognized masters of world cinema. This year, the program also includes a special section, Panorama Gala, which features some of the most interesting hit films from various festivals, including the psychological thrillerThe Salesman by Asgar Farhadi (director of the memorable A Separation), which left Cannes with the prizes for best screenplay and best actor; and the FIPRESCI-winning Toni Erdmann by German director Maren Ade, a comedy-drama about a meeting between an eccentric father and his adult, workaholic daughter. There will also be new films by Bruno Dumont (Slack Bay,with a bravura performance by Juliette Binoche); one of the fathers of the Romanian New Wave,Cristi Puiu (Sieranevada); the Korean virtuoso of revenge films, Park Chan-wook(The Handmaiden, inspiredby a Sarah Waters novel); and Petr Zelenka (Lost in Munich, this year's winner of a Czech Lion, the top film award in the Czech Republic, for best screenplay).

This collection will be complemented by more than 40 films in the Panorama section, including new works by Cristian Mungiu (Graduation,best director award at this year's Cannes Festival); Gianfranco Rosi (Fuocoammare, Golden Bear for best film at the 2016 Berlinale); Mia Hansen-Løve (Things to Come); Philippe Mora (French Movie); Lav Diaz (A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery); André Téchiné (Being 17) ;Paweł Łoziński (You Have No Idea How Much I Love You, Silver Hobby-Horse for best documentary film at the Krakow Film Festival in 2016); Chantal Akerman (No Home Movie, the last film made by the Belgian director before committing suicide); Tsai Ming-liang (Afternoon); Laurie Anderson (Heart of a Dog); Eugène Green (The Son of Joseph); Albert Serra (Last Days of Louis XIV); and Alejandro Jodorowsky (Endless Poetry).

The section Ale kino+ will include such films as After the Storm by the Japanese master of family psychodrama, HirokazuKore-eda; an adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's cult novel, Sunset Song, directed by one of the leading British representatives of auteur cinema, Terence Davies, and starring Agyness Deyn and Peter Mullan; and The Unknown Girl, by makers of minimalistic social cinema the Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

Special events: film operas

Thanks to the program for Wrocław European Capital of Culture 2016, this year's Festival will include a unique artistic event: two premiere screenings of the cinematic opera River of Fundament at the National Forum of Music. Made over a period of several years, this is the latest work by composer Jonathan Bepler and American artist Matthew Barney (director of the acclaimed Cremastercycle)-called a modern myth-maker and an "American Wagner"-who is known for his bravura performance art, installations, and videos. The inspiration for this monumental spectacle (six hours, two entr'actes) was Norman Mailer's novel Ancient Evenings, which describes the journey a human being makes from death to rebirth on the basis on Egyptian mythology. In July, New Horizons audiences will have a unique opportunity to see this film, which to date has only been shown a small number of times anywhere in the world. There will be two screenings on July 29 and 30 at 17:00 at the National Forum of Music in Wrocław. There will also be an opportunity to see Barney's other films during the festival, including the five parts of the famous Cremaster cycle (1994-2002) and Drawing Restraint 9 (2005), in which Björk plays a role alongside Barney.

This year's series of film operas will also include another special event, the Polish pre-premiere of the operaLost Highway. Based on the acclaimed film by David Lynch, it features an international cast, including Barbara King Majewska, Holger Falk, and David Moss. The libretto, based on themes from the screenplay by Lynch and Barry Gifford, was authored by Austrian Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek in collaboration with Olga Neuwirth, one of the world's leading contemporary composers, who also wrote the music for the show. The director, Natalia Korczakowska, chose the National Music Forum in Wrocław as the setting for the staging of the performance. The opera theater will therefore be released from backstage, and the entirety of the performance jives well with our Festival's multimedia and experimental nature. The show will be screened on the opening day of the Festival on July 21 and again on July 23 as part of the program of events for Wrocław European Capital of Culture 2016. During the Festival, audiences will also have a chance to take part in other events from the Lynchian universe: there will be a screening of Lynch's original films Lost Highway (1997) and Blue Velvet (1986), as well as a concert, Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of Twin Peaks at the festival club Arsenal.

Masters of European Cinema

The Masters of European Cinema Series, established in connection with the European Capital of Culture, will continue as part of the program at this year's Festival. Wrocław will play host to nine outstanding filmmakers: Agnieszka Holland, Nanni Moretti, Carlos Saura, Claire Denis, Cristian Mungiu, Petr Zelenka, Ulrike Ottinger, Jessica Hausner, and Andrey Konchalovskiy. Each guest director will show at least two of their own films and one European film inspiration, thus creating their own kind of film canon covering a variety of styles from the Neorealist Bicycle Thieves (dir. Vittorio De Sica, 1948) to the contemporary Shame (dir. Steve McQueen, 2011). Our guests will also be conducting cinema master classes.

European Capital of Culture 2016 - Starring Wrocław

Wrocław from dusk 'til dawn is a regional version of the educational and film project, The World from Dusk 'til Dawn. The idea men behind it are Mirosław Dembiński and Maciej J. Drygas; in 2006 they suggested to students of the Łódź Film School that they reconstruct the modern news agenda, which is reinterpreted by the media, into a real image of the world. The students responded with Łódź from Dusk 'til Dawn. That project was then transplanted to five other cities around the world, thanks in part to cooperation with Marcel Łoziński, Jacek Bławut, Vit Zalakevicius, Paweł Łoziński, Jacek Petrycki, Rafał Listopad and Mateusz Werner. Film school students from Minsk, Kiev, Moscow, Beijing and Tokyo produced documentaries offering completely different expressions of their cities than stereotypical media images. As part of the European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016 program, Wrocław joins the aforementioned group. The production by the young filmmakers shows one exceptional day in the life of the city on the anniversary of Poland's independence. Viewers will get an opportunity to observe Wroclaw from the point of view of its residents and well as that of foreigners. The recorded observations became a part of a collection of films that may be a starting point for reflections about the modern world. Wrocław from Dusk 'til Dawn will screen on Saturday June 23 at 4:15 PM at the New Horizons Cinema [Kino Nowe Horyzonty].

The other New Horizons event related thematically to Wrocław is a review of winning films from the 2^nd Wroclaw 48 Hour Film Project. This exceptional event, intended for professionals and amateurs, involves film crews creating and writing a script, to then produce and edit short films - all within 48 hours. Each production must somehow involve elements drawn in a lottery by the participants, while the lead must be played by the city - in this case the capital of Lower Silesia. This year's productions were produced on June 10-12, 2016. A jury consisting of Artur Barciś, Ewa Skibińska, Katarzyna Gondek and Piotr Czerkawski chose the winner: GUNSandHORSES bythe Przedmarańcza crew. The winning film as well as other award-wining titles will screen on Wroclaw's Market Square before feature-length productions.

Moretti, Delbono, Erice, Basque Cinema, Third Eye - reviews and retrospectives

Of all the European movie greats making appearances during the Festival, two will have expansive retrospectives. One is the Italian director Nanni Moretti (b. 1953) - winner of the Golden Palm, European Film Prize and many other awards. His distinguishable style is a one-of-a-kind mix of absurd humor, autobiographical motifs, political themes and a dislike of the establishment. New Horizons presents the director's complete oeuvre, ranging from shorts, to features and docs, including titles such as Dear Diary (best director at Cannes), the Golden Palm laureate The Son's Room or the anti-establishment The Caiman.

In 2016 Wrocław shares the European Capital of Culture honors with the Basque city of San Sebastián, which is why the other retrospective features Víctor Erice - the Basque master of artistically expressive auteur films teetering on the edge of fiction, cinematic essay and documentary. The NH program includes his shorts and all feature-length fiction films, including one of the most important films in Spain's history, Spirit of the Beehive, whichattempts to come to terms with its Franco dictatorial past, as well as The South and The Quince Tree Sun. Another treat will be a recording of Erice's correspondence with the classic Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, Víctor Erice-Abbas Kiarostami: Correspondence.

The Basque theme continues with the Basque Cinema: Three Generations of Directors program, featuring more than a dozen films from the 1970s through today, which range from genre cinema to experimental films. Together they provide a multi-dimensional portrait of Basque culture, with its own language, history and customs. Some of the titles include Arrebato - a cult favorite "punk film" by Iván Zulueta, who passed away in 2009 and was dubbed the "damned artist," the Golden Shell winner from San Sebastián Alas de Mariposa (dir. Juanma Bajo Ulloa), or Flowers (dir. Jose Mari Goenaga and Jon Garaño) - the first Basque-language film to be submitted by Spain and receive an Oscar nomination. Helena Taberna, Montxo Armendáriz and Juanma Bajo Ulloa will make Festival appearances in Wroclaw.

Pippo Delbono will have his own retrospective and also appear in-person at the Festival. Delbono is one of the most interesting artists of Italian and world theater, who is also fascinated with film and makes unique cinematic essays. New Horizons will feature his Scream, Love Flesh (starring Irène Jacob and Tilda Swinton), or the Don Quixote prize laureate from Locarno, Sangre, as well as films about him and recordings of selected spectacles, such as Orchids, which generated so much buzz at this year's Malta theater festival in Poznan.

This year's Third Eye section, dedicated to contemporary visual artists, presents two points of view. One is devoted to Anna Biller, a California artist whose erotic-feminist work involves the pastiche of 1970s soft-porn and spectacular use of vintage fashion and production design. The other, Posthumanizm, features films about people's relationships with animals and fantasies of animalistic transformation and includes the documentary Horse Being by Jérôme Clément-Wilz about a human-pony and the Pony Play phenomenon.

2016 is the year of William Shakespeare and our festival offers a host of films inspired by the genius bard as part of the Shakespeare Lives in Film section. It includes Derek Jarman's The Angelic Conversation and The Tempest, Macbeth directed by Roman Polański and shot in England, the auteur and classic adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing by Kenneth Branagh starring Emma Thompson, Kate Beckinsale and Denzel Washington.

As part of Midnight Madness there will be a review of the most original and extreme achievements of modern genre cinema. The program includes Jim Hosking'sThe Greasy Stranger, an impressive show of bad taste and grotesque imagination a 'la John Waters, as well as the multi-award-winning at horror film festivals, director Izaac Ezban'sThe Similars, stylized to look life 1950s horror films.

The Gdynia on the Horizons will feature Deep End (1970), Jerzy Skolimowski's first English-language film. It is a blend of surreal comedy and a coming-of-age story, but also a suggestive image of a loose and swinging London in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The screening and lecture by the Director of the Gdynia Film Festival will be held on July 25.

Classic Films on Market Square and This Year's Hits

Free screenings on Market Square will start every night at 10 PM. The program features several of this year's biggest hits: Youth by Paolo Sorrentino, The Lure by Agnieszka Smoczyńska, The Treasure byCorneliu Porumboiu, Goodnight Mommy by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiali, or TheBrand New TestamentbyJaco Van Dormael. On July 25, there will be a screening of the Italian classic A
Special Day (1977) byEttore Scoli (restored by CSC-Cineteca Nazionale under the direction of Lucian Tovoli, in cooperation with Surf Film), while on July 28 audiences can enjoy a screening of the 1919 Polish production of Aleksander Hertz's People with No Tomorrow restored by the Polish National Film Archive.

Music Stage at Arsenal

Each night between July 21 and 31, the Arsenal Festival Club will feature special concerts and DJ sets. The stars of the line-upare the California post-punk experimental trio Xiu Xiu, who will perform a live interpretation of the music from Twin Peaks. One of the discoveries at Arsenal 2016 will certainly be another American trio, Ho99o9 andtheirdynamic punk-noise show. Other musical artists at New Horizons include The Bug i.e.Kevin Martin; one of the best-known English producers will perform with Miss Red and Flowdan. A musical feast awaits audiences served up by the Polish trio of Waglewski Fisz Emade. The long-time leader of the band Voo Voo and leading figure of Polish independent music, Wojciech Waglewski, will perform live on stage with his sons, who pioneered soft sounds in Polish hip-hop along with "intelligentsia rap."

This year's New Horizons music stage will feature the T-Mobile Electronic Beats lifestyle project. The selection of performing musicians and DJ sets includes the broadest possible selection of Polish and international electronica. In addition to Natalia Nykiel, who has quickly risen to become one of the most popular vocalists in Poland, there will be a set by Emika, who is a crowd favorite in Poland. The uncompromising RSS Boys will play alongside T.Raumschmiere, the legendary punk rocker of electronica, and the delicate Niemoc will present a counterpoint to the mistress of electro, Tusia Beridze. Baasch will take the stage with their unusually moody and emotional vocals in an explosive mix of electro and house - the Warsaw duo of Bert and Igor - a.k.a. Last Robots. The exceptional surprise for New Horizons audiences are being readied by Artur Rojek, the ambassador of the Electronic Beats project.

Art Stage

The 2016 New Horizons features the fourth edition of Midnight Show at the Dizajn BWA Wrocław Gallery. This time, however, the show will not be held at the gallery's premises but on the third story (II piętro) of the house on ul. Ruska 46A/13, and will include a screening without films but involving 99 artists, 99 pieces, in nine episodes. Only the time of the Midnight Show remains unchanged; show curators Katarzyna Roj, Stach Szabłowski and Michał Grzegorzek invite visitors nine times, each time at midnight, each time for a one-hour show.

At Galeria Awangarda BWA Wrocław festival-goers can enjoy Gravity. For Tymoteusz Karpowicz byKrzysztof M. Bednarski, the excellentPolish sculptor who lives in Italy. The exhibition is devoted to the powers of attraction that act upon an entity: a human, poet and sculptor. It's also an exhibit about the power of gravity effected upon Bednarski's art by film, theater, literature and, above all, poetry. Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, Lars von Trier are just some of the authors with whom Bednarski conducts a dialog as part of Gravity. In the foreground we have the figure of Tymoteusz Karpowicz, an experimental poet who uncompromisingly pushed the envelope of linguistic possibilities. Curators: Patrycja Sikora, Stach Szabłowski. Exhibition runs from June 25 through July 31.

Meanwhile, the BWA Wrocław Gallery is showing Alicja Patanowska's Mice and Men. It is a commentary on the modern chaos of consumption for which the artist utilized byproducts of human activity. Patanowska references Dutch traditions, still nature paintings that in their symbolic nature criticize human nature, as well as to Lucifer by Gust Van den Berghe (winner of the 15th T-Mobile New Horizons IFF) that draws on similar motifs. The exhibition is open June 17 through July 31. Curator: Joanna Kobyłt.