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International Programme 2016
21 x New York Piotr Stasik

Scared and wide-awake, enlightened and confused, horny and satisfied: people in NYC. The A-train provides the narrative pattern for fast-paced image flows and meditative passages. A pop pearl.

21 x New York

Documentary Film
Poland
2016
70 minutes
Subtitles: 
English

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Agnieszka Wasiak
Director
Piotr Stasik
Cinematographer
Piotr Stasik
Editor
Dorota Wardęszkiewicz, Tomasz Wolski, Piotr Stasik
Sound
Michał Fojcik
Maybe 21 is a random number: portraits of 21 people who together are supposed to represent the totality of the more than eight million inhabitants of New York City? Not a valid number, every statistician would say, and be right. But cinema, thank God, is only marginally concerned with statistics – if at all.

“21 x New York” opens with a picture of the A-train approaching in a subway tunnel, thus creating the pattern for its own narrative by this confident allusion to one of the greatest pieces of 20th century jazz music. What we see next: scared and cheerful people, enlightened and confused ones, horny passers-by and satisfied couples. Extremely rapid switches between them, not so much contrasting as kaleidoscopic. The fast-paced flow of images is frequently interrupted by meditative passages and overlaid by some of the protagonists’ tales or reasoning, like voices from the memory of an artificial neural network, rising from this exciting bubble. It’s almost as if Baudelaire had risen again, changed time, place and medium and started a new series of lyrical tableaux. The result would not be the “Tableaux Parisiens” but “Tableaux New Yorkaises” – or “21 x New York”.

Ralph Eue


Nominated for MDR Film Prize

Ab Ovo

Animated Film
Poland
2013
6 minutes
Subtitles: 
_without dialogue / subtitles

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Marcin Malatyński
Director
Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi
Music
George Antoniv
Cinematographer
Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi
Editor
Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi
Animation
Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi
Script
Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi
The film shows a new life waking up and the transformation of a female body which loses its former shape. The physical sensation becomes increasingly more distinct until the moment when the baby leaves the boundaries of the mothers body.
International Programme 2015
Don't Lose Your Head Karolina Specht

Far too much of the content of human communication never goes beyond a short-lived mind game. The speech bubbles devour themselves like the revolution which devours its children, while the system keeps reproducing itself. Is this about media, the church, politics? Let everybody decide for themselves.

Don't Lose Your Head

Animated Film
Poland
2015
4 minutes
Subtitles: 
_without dialogue / subtitles

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Marcin Malatyński
Director
Karolina Specht
Cinematographer
Karolina Specht
Editor
Karolina Specht
Animation
Karolina Specht
Script
Karolina Specht
Sound
Bogdan Klat, Wieslaw Nowak
Far too much of the content of human communication never goes beyond a short-lived mind game. The speech bubbles devour themselves like the revolution which devours its children, while the system keeps reproducing itself. Is this about media, the church, politics? Let everybody decide for themselves. This ironic computer animation gives the talking heads’ spiral of repetition another turn of the screw, using not language but images: the graphic icons which make our communication easier. Or not.

Lars Meyer
International Programme 2015
Fences Natalia Krawczuk

A lonely tree in a forest of wooden boards – and a small bird that adores him. Two dogs barking at each other while they are separated by pickets. People who fence themselves in or don’t notice when fences disappear.

Fences

Animated Film
Poland
2015
7 minutes

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Marcin Malatyński
Director
Natalia Krawczuk
Cinematographer
Natalia Krawczuk
Editor
Magdalena Chowańska
Animation
Natalia Krawczuk
Script
Natalia Krawczuk
Sound
Ewa Bogusz
A lonely tree in a forest of wooden boards – and a small bird that adores him. Two dogs barking at each other while they are separated by pickets. People who fence themselves in or don’t notice when fences disappear. These grotesque episodes about rehearsed border behaviour could also have been made by Roy Andersson. But unlike the latter’s opulent living tableaus, Natalia Krawczuk reduces her visual language to a simple style of drawing that allows for political interpretations.

Lars Meyer
International Programme 2017
How to Destroy Time Machines Jacek Piotr Bławut

Jeph Jerman rubs sticks against each other and records leaves smacking against windows. He drops stones and little bones. Jerman is a sound and mind researcher.

How to Destroy Time Machines

Documentary Film
Poland
2017
39 minutes
Subtitles: 
No

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Anną Bławut-Mazurkiewicz
Director
Jacek Piotr Bławut
Cinematographer
Adam Palenta
Editor
Aleksandra Gowin, Katarzyna Śpioch
Jeph Jerman rubs sticks against each other and records leaves smacking against windows. He drops stones and little bones. He thinks, listens, takes notes. The Arizona-based experimental musician wants to trick those time machines installed deep in his consciousness. They toss him from yesterday into tomorrow, just leaving out that precious now. Jerman is a sound and mind researcher.

Carolin Weidner
International Programme 2016
In Another World Anna Bedyńska

A baby is expected. Anticipated. Where is the head, where are the legs? But it’s different here – Kasia, who already has two kids and a career, must take a decision: her baby has Down’s syndrome.

In Another World

Documentary Film
Poland,
Russia
2016
26 minutes
Subtitles: 
English

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Marina Razbezhkina
Director
Anna Bedyńska
Cinematographer
Anna Bedyńska
Editor
Anna Bedyńska
Script
Anna Bedyńska
Sound
Anna Bedyńska
A baby is expected. Anticipated. Where is the head, where are the legs? But it’s different here – Kasia, who already has two kids and a career, must take a decision: her baby has Down’s syndrome. Nine out of ten women in Germany choose an abortion in this case. For Kasia, who is catholic, this is hard to accept – as hard as the option of having the baby. Razbezhkina student Anna Bedyńska follows the family over a period of six months, in a film that touches on the last taboo of our perfect society.

Grit Lemke

In Touch

Documentary Film
Iceland,
Poland
2018
61 minutes
Subtitles: 
English

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Łukasz Długołęcki, Haukur M. Hrafnsson
Director
Paweł Ziemilski
Music
Arni Valur Kristinsson, Martina Bertoni
Cinematographer
Filip Drożdż
Editor
Dorota Wardęszkiewicz
Script
Paweł Ziemilski, Łukasz Długołęcki, Haukur M. Hrafnsson
Sound
Piotr Kubiak, Paweł Szygendowski
On the road to a better life you are inevitably forced to leave many things behind. The Polish village of Stare Juchy is such a left-behind place. Since the 1980s, a third of its population emigrated to Iceland and none of them have returned to date. The relatives who stayed in Poland – usually the emigrants’ parents and grandparents – participate via Skype and Facebook in the lives of those who left. They rarely manage to visit each other. In the village, which is still getting emptier, time stands still and its inhabitants become the observers of events far from their surroundings. Their children have careers as police officers or construction managers, their grandchildren sing Icelandic pop songs, and they themselves have no choice but to report on the weather or the mushroom harvest. Every so often, a tentative missing feeling, even a menacing longing, creeps into the conversations. The hope for a reunion dies last.

Paweł Ziemilski uses sequences shot in Iceland that he projects on every imaginable surface in the Polish village. Thus polar lights shine in the living room, a grandfather plays football with his grandson’s image and a gym becomes an icy coast. This aesthetic trick emphasizes the melancholy and absurdity of a situation in which the supposedly better and the supposedly worse life are closely interlinked.

Kim Busch
International Programme 2013
Mother 24/7 Marcin Janos Krawczyk

The picture of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa in living rooms, hospitals or prisons. A touching episodic look at the lives of believers searching for answers and comfort.

Mother 24/7

Documentary Film
Poland
2013
30 minutes
Subtitles: 
English

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Marcin Janos Krawczyk
Director
Marcin Janos Krawczyk
Music
Michał Lorenc
Cinematographer
Marcin Sauter, Michał Marczak, Marcin Kukielski, Karolina Krawczyk
Editor
Anna Wagner, Aleksandra Panisko, Tymek Wiskirski
Blessed are the believers?! For the past 55 years, the Black Madonna of the Polish town of Częstochowa has been wandering from house to house, from fate to fate. A copy of the icon, cut down to a handy, portable size, can be rented for 24 hours for a private mass in one’s living room, at the hospital, or in prison. The presence of the miraculous image interrupts daily routines, evokes essential and existential questions of life. It’s about guilt and forgiveness, life on this earth and beyond, the hope of a miracle.
Director Marcin Janos Krawczyk follows the Saint’s convoy through contemporary Poland with great empathy. He finds moving episodes to give us insights into the lives of people wounded in body and soul, who are looking to religion for answers that real life refused to give them. The theme of the mother with whom one seeks reconciliation runs through the film like a thread. The combination of evocative music, long travellings, and the intimacy of encounters that are more like confessions creates a magnetic force that makes the film seem like a kind of cinematic pilgrimage.

Cornelia Klauß

Of a Forest

Animated Film
Poland
2014
4 minutes
Subtitles: 
_without dialogue / subtitles

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Marcin Malatyński
Director
Katarzyna Melnyk
Cinematographer
Katarzyna Melnyk
Editor
Katarzyna Melnyk
Animation
Katarzyna Melnyk
Script
Katarzyna Melnyk, Monika Dębińska
The disturbing story of an animal that doesn’t feel at home in the world of humans.
International Programme 2015
Snails Grzegorz Szczepaniak

Enchantingly portrayed snails, two young entrepreneurs and wealth on the horizon of desires are the point of departure of this Polish comedy about great ambitions and broken dreams.

Snails

Documentary Film
Poland
2015
30 minutes
Subtitles: 
English

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Zuzanna Król
Director
Grzegorz Szczepaniak
Music
Mikołaj Majkusiak
Cinematographer
Daniel Wawrzyniak, Marek Kozakiewicz
Editor
Wojciech Janas
Script
Grzegorz Szczepaniak
Sound
Paulina Bocheńska
Enchantingly portrayed snails, two young entrepreneurs and wealth on the horizon of desires are the point of departure of this Polish comedy about great ambitions and broken dreams. Breeding snails is a science of its own and replete with obstacles. Though our young entrepreneurs give their best, the snails obstinately resist, no matter how slow they are.

Matthias Heeder
International Programme 2014
Super Unit Teresa Czepiec

Le Corbusier’s machine for living as an immense prefab block of flats in the Polish town of Katowice. A mirror cabinet of longings, different passions and carefully cultivated quirks.

Super Unit

Documentary Film
Poland
2014
20 minutes
Subtitles: 
English

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Adam Ślesicki
Director
Teresa Czepiec
Cinematographer
Paweł Dyllus
Editor
Jerzy Zawadzki
Script
Teresa Czepiec
Sound
Krzysztof Ridan
The film opens with a reference to the famous Swiss architect Le Corbusier, whose vision of the new architecture culminated in the term “dwelling machine”. In one of his theses he tried to measure human needs by units. How much space does a human being need? How much is he or she entitled to? A giant modern building at the centre of Katowice, the biggest in Poland, is the concrete embodiment of this idea. Endless corridors and rattling utilities connect the more than 700 flats built in the late 1960s. But every door conceals a mirror cabinet of desires and longings that emerge in various preferences and hobbies. Adieu tristesse! This is where people live, celebrate and, if need be, remove the casing of a garage, not because the car is too big, but because it’s the people who turn this building into a “super unit” and vigorously clear the necessary space. A few sketches are enough to portray the residents as they conquer this inhospitable space. The “dwelling machine” turns out to be an organism that’s borne up by the motto “live and let live”.
Cornelia Klauß
International Programme 2018
The Briefing Filip Drzewiecki

Constantly alternating between stress and exhaustion: Filip Drzewiecki shows medical students in practical training – with a mimetic interest in the physical nature of the profession.

The Briefing

Documentary Film
Poland
2018
19 minutes
Subtitles: 
English

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Ewa Jastrzębska, Jerzy Kapuściński
Director
Filip Drzewiecki
Cinematographer
Jakub Giza
Editor
Paweł Laskowski
Script
Filip Drzewiecki
Sound
Aleksandra Pniak, Weronika Raźna, Franciszek Kozłowski
Stress is followed by exhaustion and exhaustion is followed by stress. A briefing, then things must move quickly: 37 patients, 10 discharges, 2 admissions, 0 deaths. With a mimetic interest in the physicality of the profession, Filip Drzewiecki follows medical students in practical training at the hospital: sensitive and stressed, curious and febrile. Add a soundtrack vibrant with surging blood.

Lukas Stern

The Dybbuk. A Tale of Wandering Souls

Documentary Film
Poland,
Sweden,
Ukraine
2015
90 minutes
Subtitles: 
English

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Krzysztof Kopczyński, David Herdies, Gennady Kofman
Director
Krzysztof Kopczyński
Cinematographer
Jacek Petrycki, Serhiy Stefan Stetsenko
Editor
Michał Leszczyłowski
Script
Krzysztof Kopczyński
Sound
Mateusz Adamczyk, Marcin Lenarczyk, Sebastian Witkowski
Right at the start, an excerpt from the Yiddish-language Polish 1930s classic “The Dybbuk” opens an old wound: the world of the shtetl with its old folk beliefs has vanished. But the spirit of the dead, the Dibbuk, is still walking among us. And it has many faces.

We re-emerge from the past to find ourselves in the Ukrainian town of Uman just before “Euromaidan”. A sacred place for thousands of orthodox Jews who make the pilgrimage to the grave of the Hassidic rabbi Nachman and transform the town, annoying the Ukrainian citizens who are afraid of a sell-out and react with provocations. Sometimes it’s an illegally raised cross, sometimes an information board in honour of the anti-Semitic Cossack leader and butcher Ivan Gonta. Or, rather more subtly, extra fees for kosher snacks.

The worlds clash on many levels. With great curiosity, Krzysztof Kopczyński captures the almost incompatible legends and rituals that come alive on both sides. On the one hand a completely impoverished country in the process of finding its identity, accompanied by nationalistic overtones. On the other hand a lost tradition and the experience of the Holocaust. Who owns the country? The film mines a wealth of material full of impressions, rough scenes and fables to bring the unexpected to light.

Lars Meyer

The Game

Animated Film
Poland
2011
5 minutes
Subtitles: 
_without dialogue / subtitles

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Tomasz Paziewski, Badi Badi f/x Studio
Director
Marcin Janiec
Music
Lukasz Targosz
Editor
Jaroslaw Barzan
Script
Marcin Janiec
Somewhere between life and death a thrilling chess match takes place. The stake is high - a gateway to the world of living. And the judge is someone you would definitely not like to meet...

The Gentle Giant

Animadoc
Poland
2016
11 minutes
Subtitles: 
English

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Piotr Furmankiewicz, Mateusz Michalak
Director
Marcin Podolec
Music
Rafał Samborski, Piotr Markowicz
Cinematographer
Marcin Gierbisz
Editor
Marcin Podolec
Animation
Marcin Podolec, Wiktoria Nowak
Script
Marcin Podolec
Sound
Katarzyna Szczerba, Marek Knaga
Delicate black and white pencil and ink drawings and painted-over photos illustrate the inner life of this 100-kilo giant plagued by doubts and fears. Poetry helped him find himself and he overcame the silence by going on stage as a slam poet. Marcin Podolec uses heterogenous animations to document the inner conflict of his protagonist.

Cornelia Klauß
International Programme 2013
The Love Equation of Henry Fast Agnieszka Elbanowska

An old mathematics professor and his erotic fantasies and appetites. A touching story of desires beyond the age of 95 – and spicy comic strips drawn by himself.

The Love Equation of Henry Fast

Documentary Film
Poland
2013
40 minutes

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Producer
Adam Ślesicki
Director
Agnieszka Elbanowska
Cinematographer
Paweł Nadolny
Editor
Agnieszka Elbanowska, Maryla Torbus
Script
Agnieszka Elbanowska
The universal validity of an equation can be proved by axioms or assumed to be an axiom itself. A classic axiom describes an immediately evident or conventionally accepted principle or reference to such a principle. The principles on which Polish mathematics professor Henryk Fast’s love equation is based may be deduced by interpreting his erotic drawings. In any case, they suggest that Henryk Fast has more than abstract desires at his fairly advanced age. Henryk is a hopeless romantic and would quite simply like to find a woman. The search might be complicated by the fact that one’s own idea of reality doesn’t necessarily correspond to another person’s. In Henryk’s case the magnitude of this difference can be glimpsed occasionally, for example when his daughter, who lives in America, visits him. Henryk’s equation contains at least one unknown that makes this amiable gentleman’s life so special and tells a touching story of desire at old age, beyond “conventionally accepted” realities.

Claudia Lehmann