This year’s Golden Hobby-Horse winning film was invited to the short film competition of the prestigious festival in Amsterdam.
International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam is the biggest and one of the most important documentary festivals in the world. Each year it gathers an audience of over 280 thousand people, including 3 thousand guests form the documentary industry. Films shown at IDFA often become later festival favourites. This year IDFA will take place November 14th – 25th.
The self-referential nature of “Unconditional Love” directed by Rafał Łysak enables the viewer to gain a better understanding of the unique relationship between a twenty-something-old grandson and his grandma. The woman is unable to accept the boy’s homosexuality although he is someone very important to her. Teresa is a women of set views who, due to traditional religiousness, perceives Rafał’s sexual orientation in moral categories. At the same time, she is concerned about his future because she cannot see a different way of life for a young man than marrying a woman.
Until now, apart from Łysak’s film, three other Polish documentaries were invited to competitions: “In Touch“ by Paweł Ziemilski (mid-length competition), “Connected“ by Aleksandra Maciejczyk (student competition) and “Dancing for You“ by Katarzyna Lesisz (Kids&Docs competition).
This year also older Polish productions will be presented at the festival. In the special “Me” program the audience will see documentaries awarded the Silver Horn at the 53rd Krakow Film Festival: “Father and Son” by Paweł Łoziński and “Father and Son on a Journey” by Marcel Łoziński.
This year the main guest of IDFA will be Helena Třeštíková who selected ten important and inspiring documentaries made by other filmmakers. On Helena Třeštíková’s list we can find “First Love” by Krzysztof Kieślowski.
Since 1996 the festival has been accompanied by Docs for Sale film market, which every day is visited by the representatives of documentary film industry. As every year over a dozen Polish documentary films will be included in the market’s video catalogue.
The full list of the films selected so far can be found on the festival website. More film titles will be announced next week.