WEEKEND AWARDS FOR POLISH DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS

Last weekend, Polish short documentaries won two awards at the festivals in the Netherlands and in the United States. Paweł Ziemilski - the author of the film "Rogalik," and Tomasz Śliwiński - the author of "Our Curse" enlarged the pool of their awards, adding two new statuettes.

The first one to receive an award this weekend, during the sixth edition of the Dutch festival GO SHORT was Paweł Ziemilski - the student of Lodz Film School and the author of the documentary "Rogalik".  The film took part in the international competition alongside other Polish animated film - "Toto" by Zbigniew Czapla. The winners were chosen by the jury consisting of five people. The film by Paweł Ziemilski was given the NTR Go Short award for the Best European Short Documentary in the amount of 1 000 euro, which was received in Nijmegen by the production manager - Magdalena Kondrakowicz. It is the sixth foreign award for "Rogalik" which has been already shown at over thirty festivals. During this year's edition of Go Short, apart from two Polish films in the competition section, another two films were shown in the non-competing section: "Baths" by Tomek Ducki and "Watermelon" by Tato Kotetishvili. This year's edition of the Go Short festival took place from 9 to 13 April.

Also on Sunday evening in American Aspen, at the closing ceremony of Aspen ShortsFest, Tomasz Śliwiński personally received the award for his short documentary. His diploma film - "Our Curse" - was given the Best Documentary Award.  "Our Curse" was the only Polish short film in the programme of the American festival. Aspen ShortsFest is one of most important American film festivals for short films up to 40 minutes. The winners of the main awards in the short film category become automaticallyy eligible to submit their films to the Academy Award in their category. Beginning with the August première in the Pardi di Domani competition of the Locarno Film Festival, the film by Śliwiński was screened in the competitive section of six foreign festivals, including the Dutch IDFA.

The film is a personal confession of the director, who, together with his wife, has to face a very rare, incurable disease of their new-born child - Ondine's Curse (congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, CCHS). People afflicted with this disease stop breathing during sleep and require life-long use of respirator to support their respiratory functions. The director documents the first months of his family's life after the birth of the child.

More about the festivals: Aspen Shorts Fest   and GoShort can be found on their official websites: