This year the Warsaw International Film Festival celebrated its 35th edition. Six years after its foundation, Stefan Laudyn became its new director. He transformed the event, called Warsaw film week organized by a student film club, into a prestigious international one. Due to his efforts, he succeeded in 2009 to upgrade it to an “A”- status and thus joining the top select category of international film festivals such as Cannes, Venice and Berlin. A year later he invited the Ecumenical jury. Its first prize went to De la Infancia (On Childhood), a touching dramatic story and universal challenge told by the Mexican director Carlos Carera that deals with the difficult condition of children deprived of security and stability due to adults’ behaviour men in particular. “Acting responsibly, protesting against violence, offers a glimpse of hope for families in distress and ensures that evil will not have the last word,” said the jury. At this festival, in 2013, Pawel Pawlikowski’s film Ida (Ecumenical prize and SIGNIS Europe Prize) started to conquer the world, giving and making clear that a new generation of Polish talent was emerging. In recent years it is expanding the professional part in giving more visibility of the Polish productions, leading to the CentEast Market for promoting films from Eastern Europe, where also works-in-progress are presented.
Mid-October 2020 the Ecumenical Jury gave its prize to Martin Sulik’s Muž se zaječíma ušima (The Man With Hare’s Ear), a co-production of the Czech and Slovak Republics. The award-winning film tells the history of how a man’s decisions influence his personal life and environment. “Thanks to a deep self-perception and attentive listening to others, he is able to give meaning to his life despite his mistakes. The jury highlights the remarkable way in which the film tells us that every human being is capable of developing into a full-fledged human being throughout his or her entire life”.
The members of the Jury were Jes Nysten (Denmark) and Joanna Kazimiera Wawrzynów (Poland).
Guido Convents
This article is available in CineMag SIGNIS. Europe.