There’s 18 of them. Just like the selection team led by festival director Krzysztof Gierat, this year’s representatives of the jury will have plenty of films to watch. Out of 100 competition titles, they have to choose just a handful that will leave the 64th Krakow Film Festival with awards. We will find out which documentaries and short films are going to receive the Golden Lajkoniks, Dragons, Horns, or Hejnał already on 1 June during the closing gala.
A total of 180 films are waiting for the audience of the 64th edition of the Krakow Film Festival. This number includes 55 world premieres, 11 international premieres, and 54 Polish premieres. Even the biggest cinema buffs and the most passionate film enthusiasts won’t be able to see everything. Fortunately, a significant part of the program will be available for viewing at home through the festival’s KFF VOD platform. Jurors won’t have this privilege. They must watch all competition films during the first part of the festival, and then carefully consider and discuss their choices during the final deliberations. Their decisions will be announced during the ceremonial gala at the Kijów cinema on 1 June. Winners will receive awards totalling PLN 300,000.
International Documentary Film Competition
Nick Read (United Kingdom), a multi-award-winning director of documentary films, Emmy and BAFTA nominee, as well as producer, author, and director of over 80 films, has been named chairman of the International Documentary Film Competition Jury. He is the recipient of the Foreign Press Association award (twice), the Rory Peck Impact Award, and the Human Rights / Human Wrongs Award. His latest documentary, My Name is Happy, co-directed with Ayse Toprak, received the Golden Horn for the best documentary film at the 63rd Krakow Film Festival.
Assisting the British director in selecting the best documentary are: Margje de Koning (Netherlands) – director, producer, teacher at the University of Amsterdam, and artistic director of the Movies that Matter festival since 2019. Dragan von Petrovic (Serbia) – a multiple-award-winning editor and director of documentary and fiction films. Eliza Kubarska (Poland) – an award-winning director, artist, and mountaineer. She’s a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Wajda School in Warsaw. Winner of the International Alliance for Mountain Film Grand Prix for outstanding achievements in filmmaking. Monica Lazurean-Gorgan (Romania) – an experienced producer, documentarian, member of AMPAS/Oscar, and EFA. She produced Acasa, My Home by Radu Ciorniciuc, winner of the Sundance Cinematography Award and over 40 other international awards, as well as Between Revolutions by Vlad Petri, winner of the FIPRESCI award at the Berlinale. She directed such films as A Mere Breath (Best Doc @ Sarajevo 2016) and Wood (CPH:Dox, HotDocs, etc.).
International Short Film Competition
The selection of the best short animation, documentary, and fiction films will be made by a selection team chaired by independent producer and film editor, Corina Schwingruber-Ilić (Switzerland). Since 2010, she has worked as an independent director and editor. She co-founded PRO SHORT (the Swiss Short Film Association) and a member of the Swiss and European Film Academies.
Other members of the jury evaluating international short film productions include: Heinz Hermans (Germany) – founder and director of interfilm Berlin, one of the world’s largest short film festivals. He has been the director of numerous film festivals, including Pollicino (1992-1997) in Catania, Sicily, the Going Underground super-short film festival on subway trains in Berlin and Seoul (2001-2012), and Short Visions in Ningbo, China (2014). He works as a visiting professor at SCAU University in Canton. Toril Simonsen (Norway) – for over 30 years at the Norwegian Film Institute, she has been promoting Norwegian short and documentary films. She is a co-founder of the short and documentary film festival Nordisk Panorama and co-director of the first festival in 1990. Tomek Popakul (Poland) – a graduate of the Łódź Film School, specializing in animation. He is the director of award-winning animated films such as Zima, Acid Rain, and Ziegenort, as well as a composer of cacophonous music.
International Music Documentary Competition DocFilmMusic
Eight music documentaries will be judged by the Jury chaired by Slovakian director Matej Bobrik (Slovakia, Poland). A graduate of the directing department at the Łódź Film School and the DOK PRO documentary course at the Wajda School. His debut documentary The Visit, produced by Munk Studio, won the Silver Eye award at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival. Currently, the director resides in Warsaw, creating original films and directing documentary series for platforms like Netflix and Canal+.
The director will be assisted by: Michał Fojcik (Poland) – a sound designer with more than 100 features, documentaries, and animated films in his portfolio. He received the Motion Picture Sound Editors Golden Reel Award for Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing in a Documentary Film for his work on Pianoforte. He runs the Sound Mind sound post-production studio. Ana Sofia Fonseca (Portugal) – a multiple-award-winning director with Cape Verdean roots who loves to tell fascinating and inspiring human stories. Her feature-length documentary Cesária Évora (2022) was screened in cinemas in France and the Netherlands and shown at over 60 international festivals, including the 62nd Krakow Film Festival. She runs the production company Carrossel Produções, where she works on upcoming documentary projects.
National Competition
Once again, two separate juries will be judging films in the National Competition. The first will have to select the best medium- or feature-length documentary, while the second one will choose the best short productions – in animated, fiction, and documentary categories.
Feature-length documentaries will be judged by a trio led by cinematographer Piotr Śliskowski (Poland). A graduate of the Cinematography Department at the Łódź Film School, he returned there as a lecturer in 2016. The President of the Polish Society of Cinematographers. He has worked as a cinematographer on documentaries, series, and feature films. He received a special mention in the Polish Films Competition for the film The Master (2005) at the Camerimage Festival and has been nominated multiple times for the Golden Frog in the main competition.
Alongside Piotr Śliskowski, Polish documentaries will be judged by: Joanna Ostrowska (Poland) – a doctor of humanities specializing in history. She also studied at the Institute of Audiovisual Arts and the Department of Judaic Studies at the Jagiellonian University, Gender Studies and the Department of Hebrew Studies at the University of Warsaw, and at the Łódź Film School. She is an academic lecturer, film critic, playwright, and author of acclaimed books on topics related to World War II. Since 2019, she has been a programmer for the LGBT+ Film Festival in Warsaw. Marta Minorowicz (Poland) – graduate of the Andrzej Wajda Film School and Theatre Studies at the Jagiellonian University. Her debut feature Illusion won the Grand Prix at the International Film Festival in Tirana, and her full-length hybrid between documentary and fiction film Zud was nominated for the Crystal Bear Award at the Berlin IFF. Her documentary films A Piece of Summer and Decrescendo have been noticed at numerous festivals in Poland and abroad.
As for Polish short films, the jury will be led by director and screenwriter Jacek Borcuch (Poland). His film All That I Love was a sensation at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010 where it was the first Polish film in history to be screened in the main competition. His later films Lasting and Sweet End of the Day returned from the American festival with awards. Borcuch’s directorial debut, Kallafiorr, opened the era of independent films in Polish cinema and was the first independent film to receive wide theatrical distribution. He has directed TV series such as The Dark (2006), Without Secrets (2011), and Still Here (2023).
Assisting in the selection of films to receive the Golden Hobby-Horse awards will be: Joanna Łapińska (Poland) – member of the European Film Academy. From 2002 to 2016 she was associated with the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival. The creator and head of the New Horizons Studio and the Polish Days project. Since September 2016, she has been the program director of the Transatlantyk Festival. In 2021-2022, she was the head of Gdynia Industry at the Gdynia Film Festival and in 2023 she received a nomination for the position of its Artistic Director. Julia Orlik (Poland) – a graduate and lecturer at the Łódź Film School. A resident of Krupski Młyn, where all her student films were made in the family garage. In addition to animation, she is interested in blood FX, film makeup, and conducting film workshops with children and teenagers. Her student film I Am Here was shortlisted for the GSA BAFTA Student Film Awards 2021 and won numerous prestigious awards at major international festivals. She completed her education with a diploma film titled This Will Not Be a Festival Film which, contrary to its title, was presented and awarded at numerous festivals.
All Competition Films
The FIPRESCI Jury will consist of film critics: Ziva Emersic (Slovenia), Hannes Wesselkaemper (Germany), Rafał Marszałek (Poland).
The FICC Jury will include representatives of film discussion clubs: Paweł Herman (Poland), Holger Twele (Germany), Cristina Rius Sanclimens (Spain).
For the 20th time, festival films will also be evaluated by the Student Jury. The anniversary jury will be composed of: Zuzanna Adamowicz, Aleksandra Bester, Wiktoria Gornowicz, Artur Guzik, Jędrzej Kościński, Agnieszka Kozera-Kotowska, Roman Kraiński, Sandra Meyer, Kinga Modzelewska, Paula Olszańska, Mariia Pechenizka-Tkachova, Krzysztof Strumiński.
Last but not least, the members of the audience are jurors, too. Magazyn Filmowy SFP is a partner of the competition.
Passes for the 64th Krakow Film Festival are on sale now!
The Krakow Film Festival is on the exclusive list of qualifying events for the Oscars® in the categories of short film (live action, animated, documentary) and documentary feature, as well as a recommending event 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 64th Krakow Film Festival will be held in cinemas from 26 May to 2 June and online across Poland on the KFF VOD platform from 31 May to 16 June 2024.