The Heynal, Dragons, Horns, and more Golden Hobby-Horses
Repeat screenings from this year’s edition of the Festival are still being held in cinemas in Kraków and Lesser Poland while the Krakow Film Foundation is already starting to accept submissions for the 63rd Krakow Film Festival. As every year, early October brings countless documentaries, shorts, and animated films poised to compete for exclusive slots in the program. For the first time in the history of the Festival, Polish filmmakers will compete for 4 Golden Hobby-Horses!
Kraków Film Festival once again in Kraków and all over Poland
The audience of next year’s Krakow Film Festival can expect more than 200 films, which will be screened in all Kraków studio cinemas as well as in the Kino Pod Wawelem and Nowa Huta open-air cinemas.
They will be presented as part of several thematic series and in 4 competitions: international documentary, short, and DocFilmMusic as well as National Competition. All competition films will be shown for the first time in Poland while many of them will enjoy their world premieres at the Krakow Film Festival.
After the cinema segment, a significant part of the program will be made available on the KFF VOD platform to viewers throughout Poland for over 2 weeks. It will be an excellent opportunity to catch up on the festival but also to participate in it despite geographical, social, or economic obstacles.
Like every year, we’re expecting several thousand submissions from all over the world. We will be looking for bold characters, fascinating stories, high production values, but also novel and interesting perspectives. We are looking forward to seeing the latest films by renowned filmmakers, but also for debuts! – says Krzysztof Gierat, director of the Krakow Film Festival – Festival selectors will also be scouring the world’s most important film festivals for more cinematic gems. We’re sure that we are going to delight viewers with an extremely diverse film program once again.
4 Golden Hobby Horses in the National Competition
In response to creators’ needs, for the first time ever the National Competition will be held in two separate segments: documentary and short film. At the same time, four equivalent Golden Hobby-Horses will be awarded: for best documentary over 30 minutes, for best short fiction, animated, and documentary film under 30 minutes. This will provide creators of various types of films with a chance to win the highest awards in each category.
Despite the fact that Krakow Film Festival is the oldest festival in Poland and one of the oldest in the world, we’re not afraid of changes and we dynamically react to signals from viewers and filmmakers. Personally, I am glad that the upcoming edition will let us appreciate Polish films even more! – explains Barbara Orlicz-Szczypuła, President of the Krakow Film Foundation, the festival’s organiser.
As usual, Golden and Silver Dragons will be waiting for creators in the international short film competition In the international documentary competition, Silver Horns will be awarded to the director of a film with high artistic values and to the director of the best film on social issues. The Golden Horn will go to the director of the best film in the competition. The DocFilmMusic competition features the Golden Heynal as its award.
The total prize pool will be over PLN 300,000.
Krakow Film Festival is included on the prestigious list of film events qualifying for the Academy Awards in the short film competition (fiction film, animated film, documentary film) and feature-length documentary film competition, as well as recommending films for the European Film Awards in the same categories.
Selectors in the starting blocks
As in previous years, a team headed by Krzysztof Gierat and consisting of 20 outstanding film critics, theorists, and filmmakers will pick from among several thousand candidates.
Submissions to film competitions will be accepted in two stages: until 30 November 2022 for films made before 31 October 2022 and until 31 January 2023 for foreign films made after 31 October 2022, and until 15 February 2023 for Polish films made after 31 October 2022.
Krakow Film Festival is one of the oldest and most recognizable events dedicated to documentary, animated, and short films. Film screenings are accompanied by meetings with filmmakers, workshops and exhibitions, concerts, KFF Industry events, including presentations of new Polish documentary and animated projects.
Spanish cinema will be a special guest of the upcoming edition of the Festival. The “Focus on Spain” segment will feature the latest Spanish documentary and short films.
The Rules and Regulations guiding the film competitions and the entry form can be found at www.krakowfilmfestival.pl.
The 63rd Krakow Film Festival will be held in Kraków cinemas from 28 May to 4 June, and online throughout Poland on 2–18 June 2023.