MATEUSZ GŁOWACKI I TOMASZ ŚLIWIŃSKI - THE WINNERS OF THE SHORT WAVES FESTIVAL
"Killing Auntie" by Mateusz Głowacki won in the Poznań Open competition. "Our Curse" by Tomasz Śliwiński won the Short Waves Grand Prix award.
The sixth edition of Short Waves Festival, which ended on Sunday, was record-breaking as far as attendance is concerned. For eight days, fans of short films filled the cinema halls and other festival venues in Poznań to the brim.The best film of the competition at Poznań Open, "Killing Auntie" by Mateusz Głowacki, was chosen from among 28 new Polish short films. In his 30-minute feature film, Mateusz Głowacki made use of the novel by Andrzej Bursa about 23-year-old Jurek, who commits murder trying to escape the boredom of everyday life. This is how the jury, under the chairmanship of Joanna Kos-Krauze, justified its decision: "Witty and surreal portrait of the struggle of a young man, who is tired by the talkativeness of his aunt. Dark, but at the same time lightweight. Consistent from the very beginning. It surprises from the very beginning with peculiar actions the aim of which is to deal with the moral dilemma related to murder. Crime and Punishment in a deadly serious version. In a nutshell, everything you wanted to know about killing aunts, but you were afraid to ask."
Apart from winning the Poznań Open Jury Award (20 000 zloty), Mateusz Głowacki won also the Poznań Open Audience Award (10 000 zloty). The film which viewers liked the most was his second film taking part in the competition: "Survey about Women" - a funny story about the fair sex from the point of view of 30-year-old men.
Two equal special mentions of the Poznań Open Jury went to the experimental film "Shame" by Karma Fryc and the animated film "Luke and Lotta" by Renata Gąsiorowska. The first one was appreciated, among others, "For great sensitivity and imagination. Visual and emotional. We saw that shame has many lights, shades and half-shadows. And it does not have any limits,"wrote the members of the jury. Renata Gąsiorowska received special mention "for the faith in love and finding a great graphical form for it. We believed that love is possible also between impossible shapes. (...) For creating competition for Gangnam Style, that is, the sensational Dance of the Cones!"
In the Grand Prix competition, "Our Curse" by Tomasz Śliwiński is the winner. International audience decided that this film will get the award (20 000 zloty). The viewers, who saw this film during the tour of the festival in 65 cities in Poland and abroad, cast a total of 5 000 votes. The documentary by Tomasz Śliwiński is an extremely personal record of getting used to the son's incurable illness.
The Short Waves Festival is organised by Poznań Ad Arte Foundation, which has been actively working in the field of promotion and distribution of Polish short cinema and audio-visual art for 10 years. The Foundation is also the Polish representative of Future Shorts, the largest platform for presenting and promoting short cinema on the world.
More about the festival on the website: www.shortwaves.pl
[Source: press release by Ad Arte Foundation]