As always, this year's festival features a championship lineup: the representation of Polish films is strong, diverse, and guaranteed to provide excitement from start to finish. The 24th mBank New Horizons will showcase 13 feature-length films, four co-productions, a set of animations, and over 30 shorts of Polish production.
Highlights include the world premieres of Adrian Panek's Simona Kossak, Łukasz Barczyk's Challenge of the Bow, and Endless by Wojciech Puś. One of the festival's opening films will be Jan P. Matuszyński's Minghun (international premiere), while the event will close with Magnus von Horn's Girl with the Needle (Polish co-production). Dr. Irena Eris is a proud partner of the Polish film screenings.
Simona Kossak: a natural rebel
Breaking away from her family's artistic tradition, Simona Kossak elevated the fight for Poland's natural ecosystems to an art form. Simona Kossak – an outstanding popularizer of science – is the heroine of Adrian Panek's latest film, which will have its world premiere at the New Horizons. The film follows Simona (portrayed by Sandra Drzymalska) as she abandons her home, tradition, and social conventions to become a scientist in Bialowieza, living life on her own terms. The cast includes Jakub Gierszał and Agata Kulesza.
Challenge of the Bow: myth and love
In The Odyssey, Homer described Penelope as a faithful wife, holding onto the memory of Odysseus and hoping for his return while cleverly arranging archery contests to deter suitors. Łukasz Barczyk reimagines this archetype in his latest film, turning a modern Penelope into Marta (Marieta Żukowska). Ten years after her husband's disappearance, she seeks to uncover the truth about what happened to him and define the relationship that once bound them. Accompanied by his best friend (played by Łukasz Barczyk) and a film crew, her husband had traveled to the Greek island of Thassos, where he was last seen. Will Marta manage to reconstruct the sequence of events and solve the mystery?
Endless: towards a queer utopia
There is no end to transformation, there will never be enough, there will never be enough, we hear in the opening of Endless, an unusual project by Wojciech Puś. Initiated in 2016, this artistic quest involves a group of non-binary, transgender, and queer individuals, who talk about their experience in a way that escapes definitions, redefining issues of identity and corporeality in their own idiom. In Endless, these activities take the form of a hypnotic film reminiscent of a narcotic vision, centered on the self-seeking X, played by Szymon Czacki.
More (exceptional!) Polish cinema
The festival will also feature three films addressing the migration crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border from different perspectives: Agnieszka Zwiefka's Silent Trees, Walls – the directorial debut of Kasia Smutniak, one of this year's jurors, and Agnieszka Holland's Green Border, which will be screened for free as part of Cinema at the Market Square. Additionally, Andrzej Wajda's legendary Ashes and Diamonds will be shown at the Wroclaw Market in collaboration with the Wroclaw Feature Film Studio.
The Polish film representation also includes Do I Still Get on Your Nerves? by Michał Szcześniaka, Such Feeling by Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, 12.41 Kilometers by Karolina Breguła, It's Not My Film by Maria Zbąska (competing in the Smart7 section), as well as the Polish co-productions Housekeeping for Beginners by Goran Stolevski and The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer. The Young Horizons section will also feature Polish accents, including Basia. I'm Just Right – a set of animations featuring adventures of a favorite of preschoolers, and Aga Borzym's Girls' Stories – a candid and tender portrait of contemporary teenage girls.
As usual, the Shortlist will feature a strong team of White-Reds, in a selection of the best shorts of the season (as many as 20 films!). Noteworthy is the exceptional Images of Revolution – an unknown to wider audiences, but fascinating phenomenon: etudes by African filmmakers studying at the Łódź Film School, including new wave and musical films by Mostafa Derkaoui. The collection is part of the African New Waves section, in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. An old-school but invariably delightfully formally innovative set of shorts made its way into the selection Life is movement, cinema is death – a collection of biological films from the WFO (Educational Film Studio), part of the Visual Front section.
