Fascinating biographies

dir. Marek Jagielski

75′dok2023

Boxing was an iconic sport discipline at the time of Poland’s first post-war world championship in boxing. In ruined Warsaw, a legendary coach, Feliks Stamm, must rebuild the Polish boxing squad to face the most powerful team in the world – that of the USSR.

dir. Xawery Deskur

47′dok2023

DJ Edee Dee aka Edward Gil-Deskur, is an iconic figure in Krakow’s club world. Edward was born with congenital glaucoma and will soon completely lose his eyesight. In his adaptation to the new reality, he is assisted by AI, with whom he begins to form an increasingly closer relationship.

dir. Diana Nicolae

97′dok2024

Can poetry pose a threat to a dictatorship? The poems written by Ana Blandiana outraged Nicolae Ceaușescu and his entourage, but they enchanted and touched her readers and literature afficionados, also from outside of communist Romania. The poetry of the legendary author crossed national boundaries, volumes of her poems were published in the West – yet despite many opportunities, she decided to stay in her country.

dir. Damien Aimé Dupont

84′dok2023

In 1965, Jackson C. Frank, a folk singer, assisted by Paul Simon, had already recorded his only album, which influenced many American and British folk musicians. Nevertheless, he was unable to defeat his demons. The film shows the artist’s emotional landscape.

dir. Ivan Zahínos

29′dok2024

An unpretentious and poetic journey through a magical, endangered region of the Amazon rainforest in Bolivia. People living in the jungle are trying to restore the original state of the areas stripped bare of any trees.

dir. Tetiana Dorodnitsyna, Andrii Lytvynenko

70′dok2024

Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world – that’s the motto of Anna, the strongest woman in the world, who loves animals. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Anna joined by a group of volunteers are doing everything possible to save as many wounded and abandoned animals as they can in these difficult days.

dir. Arkadiusz Bartosiak

75′dok2024

‘I have achieved all I wanted in life’, says Andrzej Seweryn, who then grabs us on a dynamic journey through successive professional challenges, which he still takes up with youthful fervour. The camera becomes his everyday companion helping us to see from up close all the emotions as they arise.

dir. Piotr Kielar

86′dok2024

Grzegorz Rosiński, one of the most renowned Polish comic strip creators and the author of drawings for the series ‘Thorgal’, has retired. But what does it mean for an artist to end his career? Rosiński keeps drawing and plans to leave the profession on his own rules only.

dir. Günter Atteln

88′dok2024

The eponymous character, who conducts the best European orchestras, says that the most important thing is to have a good team – both in the family and at work. Joana Mallwitz is filmed over the breakthrough period of two years when her son is born and her career considerably speeds up.

dir. Marcin Strauchold

88′dok2023

Janusz Morgenstern was a director of films and TV series that left a permanent mark on Polish cinematography, such as ‘Good Bye, Till Tomorrow’, ‘To Kill This Love’ or ‘More Than Life at Stake’. Morgenstern’s portrait is woven out of broadcasts, photos, interviews with his loved ones and his own films.

dir. Askold Kurov, Anonymous 1

89′dok2024

In Russia, those who hail the truth are considered foreign intelligence agents. One example is journalists of Novaya Gazeta, which received the Nobel Peace Prize six months before the invasion of Ukraine. How to maintain independence when the screws are being put on even harder?

dir. Nicolas Jack Davies

127′dok2023

This film has the dynamics of progressive rock, the preferred genre of the cult American band Mars Volta for over twenty years. The film edited out of hundreds of hours of archival footage is a painfully honest portrayal of friendship, successes, transformations and failures.

dir. Macha Ovtchinnikova

14′fab2023

This miniature, set in two time realities, presents a biography and philosophy of an activist Emma Goldman (1869-1940). ‘The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands’ says the protagonist, ‘but true emancipation begins in a woman's soul.’ Has this idea become outdated or perhaps it resonates nowadays stronger than ever?

dir. Philipp Fussenegger, Judy Landkammer

102′dok2024

Peaches, who is a performer, provoker and a sassy lady, does not slow down in the sixth decade of her life. To the contrary, her tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of her album ‘Teaches of Peaches’ was an explosion of creativity. For the filmmakers, it was an opportunity to find out more about this rebellious artist, an icon of feminism and queer culture. Age rated: 18+

dir. Johanna Bernhardson

84′dok2024

A renowned Swedish director, Roy Andersson, had three brothers, but their lives parted dramatically at a certain time. A daughter of one of them, standing behind the camera, in both an intimate and uncompromising way, x-rays the family story marked by addictions and conflicts.

dir. Kacper Świtalski

36′dok2023

A clash of grey communist reality with the American dream. A nostalgic story of Staś, a welder, who left Poland in the 1970s to start working in the biggest and oldest travelling circus in the world.

dir. Andrzej Fidyk

70′dok2015