A film journey in search of the roots of the Dream Factory will open the anniversary 60th Krakow Film Festival.
The premiere of the film “Pollywood” by Paweł Ferdek will accompany the opening ceremony of the anniversary 60th Krakow Film Festival. It is a personal journey to America, which the director made in the footsteps of the Eastern European founders of Hollywood: Samuel Goldwyn, Luis B. Mayer and the Warner brothers. The ceremony with the participation of the filmmakers is held on the 31st of May.
– It was here in Poland that it all began, the title of the film by Paweł Ferdek seems to suggest. So how not to start the anniversary celebrations with the return to the sources of the cinema, following in the footsteps of our ancestors, emphasises Krzysztof Gierat, the Director of the Festival. It was in Krakow where the first film screening was held on the territory of Poland, it was in Sucha near Krakow where Billy Wilder was born, and it was here where the first film school started operating and it was here where the first film festival in Poland was established. And our people also built Hollywood!
“Pollywood” is a universal and exciting story about courage and desperation, set against the background of the history of the Dream Factory and contemporary Hollywood. Ferdek overcomes successive obstacles on his way to learn its deepest secrets. He reaches producers, who reveal to him how they succeeded on their own. The director takes us around the great American Dream, which is the foundation of today’s film industry. Will his dream of Hollywood also come true?
“Pollywood”, dir. Paweł Ferdek 
“Pollywood”, dir. Paweł Ferdek 
“Pollywood”, dir. Paweł Ferdek 
“Pollywood”, dir. Paweł Ferdek 
“Pollywood”, dir. Paweł Ferdek 
“Pollywood”, dir. Paweł Ferdek
– For me, this film was a great, several-year journey into the unknown, tells us the director, Paweł Ferdek. – I made it because I was fascinated by the courage and steadfastness of the visionaries from Poland who, a hundred years ago, created the great Hollywood only from their dreams. I would like the viewers of Pollywood to take from the film’s protagonists the fearlessness, the mischievous gleam in the eyes and to boldly follow their own visions. I am incredibly happy that we will meet the Polish audience in Krakow and that we are opening the Festival! See you after the screenings.
Paweł Ferdek – director and film scriptwriter, script doctor, traveller. A graduate of the programme EKRAN in the Wajda School and of the international relations at the University of Warsaw. The author of the script of the film “Ki” (the Film Festival in Venice, the best Polish film award at the Off Plus Camera). The director of, among others, “Leaders” (co-produced with TVP1, premiere at the IDFA Amsterdam 2013), “Beautiful Misunderstanding” (broadcast on TV ARTE), “Glass Trap” (nomination for the European Film Award, the award for the best European film at the Tampere festival). His films were shown at the cinemas and on television (TVP, TVN, Canal +, Planete, ARTE).
The producers of the documentary film are the East Beast Ltd. and the HBO Europe, in co-operation with EBH Ltd. and the Masovia Warsaw Film Fund. The film was made with the support of the Polish Film Institute and the Media Creative Europe.