"THE HAMLET SYNDROME" WITH A DOUBLE AWARD IN TRIEST

The film by the duo Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski received the audience award for the best documentary film and the Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa Award at the Trieste Film Festival.

The first edition of the Trieste Film Festival took place in 1987 during the greatest social and political changes in Central and Eastern Europe. This Italian event, taking place every year in the third week of January in Trieste, is dedicated to cinema from that region. It is supposed to be a bridge to connect the local audience with that side of Europe. The organizers were not wrong with this assumption – the event for years has been attracting a large audience, for whom awaits an extraordinarily rich programme.

Last year, Paweł Łoziński and his The Balcony Movie celebrated a double victory, and this year the audience and the jury were amazed by The Hamlet Syndrome by Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski.

The war had a strong impact on the generation of young Ukrainians. A few months before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 five protagonists, inspired by the motives from Hamlet, on stage come back to brutal experiences from previous years, trying to fight their traumas. Each of the characters in their own way struggles with some kind of disappointment, helplessness or anger. SŁAWIK as a soldier went through a real hell of war and captivity. KATIA wants her mother to finally forgive her for going to the front. RODION fled the conflict-ridden Donbass and, as an LGBT person, struggles with the growing homophobic behaviors in post-revolutionary Ukraine. ROMAN as a war medic rescued wounded soldiers and still struggles with traumatic memories. OKSANA as an actress struggles on the artistic front. But the significant thing for all of them is that, regardless of what values ​​they represent, the last years were a series of shocking experiences that brutally left marks on their psyche. For each of them, the stage becomes a tribune from which they can shout their griefs while asking themselves the Hamletian question: to be or not to be?

The list of awarded films can be found here.