POLISH FILMS IN THE HOT DOCS PROGRAM
The program of the prestigious Canadian Hot Docs festival has been announced. This year’s selection includes four Polish documentaries.
Initiated in 1993, the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is the largest documentary film festival in North America. Until now, it took place in the spring, and film screenings were accompanied by international film markets and industry conferences. This year, due to the situation, the festival will be moved and the organizers will follow up on the changes in the date.
In the section The Changing Face of Europe, festival viewers will have the opportunity to see "Lessons of Love" by Małgorzata Goliszewska and Kasia Mateja. It is a story about Jola, a woman who takes and important step and after 50 years flees from her marital nightmare in Italy to her hometown of Szczecin. There, she finally lives the way she always dreamed: she dances, sings, writes poems and songs. Her lyrics are about love she has never known. In Jola's eyes, the world is romantic, colorful and dramatic. One night she is on the dance floor at Cafe Smile, where she meets Wojtek – a man who is older than her and falls head over heels in love with her.
Eliza Kubarska will present her latest film. "The Wall Of Shadows" documentary will be showcased in the International Spectrum section. The film will not only explore the phenomenon of alpine expeditions, but also talk about interpersonal relationships with powerful nature in the background.
A sparing, almost intimate portrait of a neighboring community and a couple of owners of a Warsaw tenement house, recovered as part of the restitution of real estate, inherited from their ancestors of Jewish origin will be showcased as part of the Revisionaries section. The main characters of the film "Złota Street" are thirty-five-year-old Krzysztof and his wife Ida, and the director of the documentary is Tomasz Knittel.
In turn, Julia Pełka's "Fat Kathy" is competing for the title of the best short film. The title Fat Kathy is a water pump in which 8 super sensitive clams connected to computers are placed. The lives of millions of people living in the city depend on them. The only scientist in Poland - the malacologist makes sure that the individual clams selected for the system work properly and in the event of water contamination they raise the alarm.
The full festival program can be found on the festival's website.