They have earned praise from critics, captivated audiences across the globe, and garnered accolades at prestigious festivals – all while conveying a breadth of perspectives and – often harrowing – emotions through the short form. The Krakow Film Festival once again invites audiences to experience the most compelling European animated, fiction, and documentary shorts of the past year.
The Short Matters! Short Films of the Year has accompanied the festival for years. This year’s edition is going to be full of surprising animations and fiction films inspired by both historical events and current socio-political issues. All the films featured in the section have been shortlisted for nomination for the European Film Awards – the continent’s equivalent of the American Oscars.
Animation
Among the selected films is Zima directed by Tomasz Popakul and Kasumi Ozeki, which previously impressed the Jury at the 63rd Krakow Film Festival, winning the Golden Dragon in the International Short Film Competition and the Golden Hobby-Horse in the National Competition. It is a metaphysical ecological horror set in a snow-covered village which becomes a nesting ground of Polish vices. The film’s punk-metal soundtrack intensifies the darkness of this cruel microcosm where coldness dominates human relationships, and superiority over nature is justified by tradition and beliefs. Amidst this, two sensitive rebels strive to find their place.
Youthful anger also erupts – literally, up to seven times a day – in The Exploding Girl directed by Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel. Over three months, Candice’s body becomes a battleground for her emotions, with each detonation representing a helpless outburst of anger and existential anxiety. Through this brutal yet moving metaphor, the filmmakers explore the sensitivity and frustration of Generation Z, exhausted by constant pressure. The animation, balancing post-realism and video game aesthetics, captivates with its provocative form and unique sense of humour.
German director Ulu Braun contemplates the state of the modern world in his ingenious video collage Pacific Vein. By combining media images with documentary footage, Braun takes the audience on a journey through America, where Julian Assange – Australian activist and founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks – stands among replicas of Roman imperial architecture. Here, portrayed as a soda vendor, he reflects on the digital transformation of our reality, where everyone is under constant surveillance of ever-present cameras. In Braun’s vision, the famed American dream morphs into a nightmare, where you can no longer know who the enemy is and where one can find the line dividing reality from fiction.
Longing for the camera and life under constant observation are the tiny characters of the Oscar-nominated stop-motion animation Wander to Wonder directed by Nina Gantz. Mary, Billybud, and Fumbleton, stars of the former children’s programme Wander to Wonder, find themselves trapped in a studio following the sudden death of their beloved caretaker and show creator. The studio becomes both a prison and a place of mourning. The heroes wither away from an overabundance of memories as well as physical hunger while attempting to film new episodes, with each subsequent effort ending in failure. In this world, nostalgia intertwines with horror, and innocence with grotesque. Gantz skilfully balances humour and tenderness to weave a poignant tale of loss, denial, and the transition to a new chapter in life.
Documentary
An unconventional form in the “Short Matters!” section – though no longer animation but an experimental documentary using photogrammetry – is presented by Alice Brygo in Ardent Other. To ignite collective imagination and convey the mood of a society in moral crisis, the director needed only a crowd gazing into a fire. The catastrophe remains off-screen, but its destructive force is reflected on the faces – motionless, illuminated by the flames. Brygo guides us through mass terror, where voices from the crowd – whispers, screams, expressions of despair and anger – reveal the fears and fantasies of contemporary France.
Social issues, filtered through the sensitivity of a seven-year-old girl searching for her brother after a brutal police raid, and a young boy trying to start anew after prison, also interest Basil da Cunha in 2720. The director, oscillating between fiction and documentary, painfully intertwines their stories to portray the inequalities of Portuguese reality, where there’s a will but there’s not always a way.
Fiction
Current topics and strained relationships are also explored by filmmakers creating fiction films. A prime example is Mohammed Almughanni, who in An Orange from Jaffa – a production recognised in the previous edition of the Festival with the Jury Award for Best European Film – unexpectedly intertwines the fates of an ageing Jew and a young Palestinian. The men are detained by soldiers at a checkpoint near Jerusalem, where, trapped in a car, they must spend several long hours together. Shared fear and escalating tension while waiting for a decision that is to affect the rest of their lives bring the protagonists closer. Through this intimate story, Almughanni exposes not only the absurdity of the ongoing conflict but also shows that sometimes the hardest boundaries to cross are those built in our minds.
A similarly absurd and politically motivated detention is depicted in the Palme d’Or-winning The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (dir. Nebojša Slijepčević). The film recounts true events from 1993 when an oppressive border inspection occurred at the train station Štrpci, Bosnia and Herzegovina. When one passenger, Milan, cannot prove his identity, the situation becomes tragic. Among hundreds of travellers, however, one man dares to speak up. Slijepčević shies away from pathos and excessive dialogue, focusing the camera on glances, gestures, and the poignant silence between the characters.
Moral dilemmas – though in a film escaping the burden of political conflict – are faced by the protagonists of the French production Clamor. Director Salomé Da Souza crosses social taboos and, in an atmosphere full of sensual tension, shows a forbidden love between cousins.
A slightly more cheerful tone is present in Wissam Charaf’s film If the Sun Is Drowned Into An Ocean of Clouds, shot in Beirut. Raed, the main character, has only one task: to prevent passersby from approaching the coast. Each day, however, the horizon gradually disappears behind a growing structure, and he begins to experience peculiar encounters – are they merely dreams or reflections of his unfulfilled desires?
Films in the Short Matters!:
- 2720, dir. Basil da Cunha, Portugal, Switzerland, 25’, 2023
- Wander to Wonder, dir. Nina Gantz, Netherlands, France, Belgium, United Kingdom, 14’, 2023
- Clamor, dir. Salomé Da Souza, France, 25’, 2023
- The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, dir. Nebojša Slijepčević, Croatia, France, Bulgaria, Slovenia, 14’, 2024
- If the Sun Is Drowned Into An Ocean of Clouds, dir. Wissam Charaf, France, Lebanon, 20’, 2023
- Pacific Vein, dir. Ulu Braun, Germany, 12’, 2024
- Ardent Other, dir. Alice Brygo, France, 16’, 2023
- An Orange from Jaffa, dir. Mohammed Almughanni, France, Poland, Palestine, 27’, 2023
- The Exploding Girl, dir. Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel, France, 19’, 2024
- Zima, dir. Tomasz Popakul, Kasumi Ozeki, Poland, 26’, 2023
As usual, the festival will invlude Q&A sessions after selected screenings.
Passes and tickets for the 65th Kraków Film Festival are now on sale!
The Krakow Film Festival is on the exclusive list of film events qualifying for the Academy Awards® in short film categories (fiction, animation, documentary) and feature-length documentary and provides recommendations for the European Film Awards in the same categories.
The Kraków Film Festival is organised with the financial support of the Municipality of Kraków, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the European Union’s Creative Europe program, the Lesser Poland Province, the Polish Film Institute. The festival is co-organised by the Polish Filmmakers Association.
The 65th Krakow Film Festival will be held from 25 May to 1 June 2025, and online on KFF VOD from 30 May to 15 June.