The 17th T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival will take place in Wroclaw on August 3-13, 2017. It will screen 200 feature films from over 50 countries, of which 138 will have their Polish and 4 world premieres. Screenings will be held at the New Horizons Cinema and at the Wroclaw Market Square. For the twelfth time, the city of Wrocław is hosting the event and, for the fifteenth time, T-Mobile Polska S.A. is the festival’s titular sponsor.

The festival begins on August 3 with the Polish premiere of François Ozon’s Double Lover. The cult director of 8 Women this time takes viewers into the mysterious world of sex and psychoanalysis. The festival will culminate with the screening of Cannes Grand Prix winner 120 Beats Per Minute by Robin Campillo – a film about the 1990s AIDS movement; it is a captivating portrait of youth looking into the eyes of death, a moving drama and a powerful and important political film.

This year's New Horizons International Film Competition will premiere 12 films that stand out for their search of new forms of expression, uncompromising nature and the courage to talk about important topics. Among them are three Polish films. One is a portrait of one of the most original couples of the Polish art scene, Wojtek Bąkowski and Zuza Bartoszek - the Heart of Love by Lukasz Ronduda. There is the epic clash of art and science in the form of an experimental lecture in Norman Leto’s Photon. The Birds Are Singing in Kigali by Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof Krauze (best actor awards for Jowita Budnik and Eliane Umuhire at the Karlovy Vary Festival) is a transgressive journey through traumas and mourning. The competition also includes films from Mexico (Strange But True by Michel Lipkes, Everything Else by Natalia Almada), France (Makala by Emmanuel Gras), USA (the first film since the war filmed in the Brooklyn Hasidic community, Menashe by Joshua Z. Weinstein), Germany (Western by Valeska Grisebach), Denmark (Winter Brothers by Hlynur Pálmason), Serbia (All the Cities of the North by Dane Komliden) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (3 Women by Sergio Flores Thoriji). Last year’s festival Grand Prix winner, Tamer El Said, Israeli director Hadas Ben Aroya, Polish actress Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Argentine director Gaston Solnicki (who will have a retrospective in Wrocław), and the Brazilian producer and festival programmer Gustavo Beck will take part in jury and award this year’s festival Grand Prix. As each year, the audience will also select their favorite film for the Audience Award.

Festival sections include Polish premieres, discoveries and hits from world festivals, including this year's winner of the Golden Palm at Cannes, The Square by Ruben Östlund, winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival The Woman Who Left by Lav Diaz, the much anticipated Happy End by Michael Haneke, David Lowery's A Ghost Story which received excellent reviews at Sundance, and Manifesto directed by Julian Rosefeldt and starring Cate Blanchett, as well as award-winner from this year's Berlinale: On Body and Soul (Golden Bear), Félicité by Alain Gomis (Jury Grand Prize), The Other Side of Hope directed by Aki Kaurismäki (Silver Bear for Best Direction) and A Fantastic Woman by Sebastián Lelio (Silver Bear for Best Screenplay).  The festival also inlcludes films lauded and awarded at this year’s Cannes Film Festival: Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled  (Best Director), Fatih Akin’s In the Fade  (Best Female Role for Diane Kruger), Loveless by Andrei Zvyagintsev (Special Jury Prize),  April's Daughters by Michel Franco (Un Certain Regard Jury Prize) and Kastemir Balagov's Closeness (FIPRESCI "Un Certain Regard" Prize).

There will also be Polish films, including the acclaimed LovingVincent by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman the world's first fully painted feature film. Festival viewers will be the first to see Wild Roses by Anna Jadowska with a wonderful role by Marta Nieradkiewicz, Robert Wichrowski’s The Son of Snow Queenstarring Michalina Olszanska and Franciszek Pieczka and 13 Summers Under Water by Wiktoria Szymańska.

The festival's guests will include, among others, outstanding Iranian filmmakers: Mohsen Makhmalbaf (will show the scarred and censored for 26 years by the Iranian government The Nights of Zayandeh-Rood) and Mohammad Rasoulof (Wroclaw will see the Polish premiere of his film, A Man of Integrity – Awarded in the Cannes Un Certain Regard section). Among the guests will be, among others, the Hungarian master Kornel Mundruczó (his Jupiter Moon, which showed at Cannes), David Lowery (A Ghost Story), Denis Côté (who will showcase his latest documentary (A Skin So Soft), Chilean actress Daniela Vega (the titular woman from A Fantastic Woman by Sebástian Lelio), Sakari Kousmanen and Sherwan Haji (actors from Aki Kaurismäki’s film The Other Side of Hope), Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce (The Misandrists), outstanding Lithuanian Director Šarūnas Bartas (who will premiere the Lithuanian-Polish co-production of Frost starring Vanessa Paradis and Andrzej Chyra), Sanal Kumar Sasidharan – this year's winner of the Rotterdam Festival for Sexy Durga, and the award-winning director of The Ornithologist, the Portuguese Pedro Rodrigues.

The festival program also features retrospectives of two outstanding European artists: the late French great Jacques Rivette and the intriguing German cinematographer and director, longtime Béla Tarr collaborator, Fred Kelemen (who will be a festival guest). New Israel Cinema will receive special attention this year –it is a dynamically developing, and surprisingly fresh feature-film scene, that is engaged and constantly confronting the surrounding world of cinema. The film section will be accompanied by an exhibition of Israeli visual artists called Homefront at the BWA Studio Gallery. Hong Sang-soo, familiar to festival audiences, will also have a mini-retrospective. As part of the Hong Sang-soo X 4, visitors may enjoy all the Korean director’s movies that premiered in the past year: Yourself and Yours (Toronto), On the Beach at Night Alone(Berlinale), Claire's Camera and The Day After (Cannes). In times of growing social and political tensions exploding in the largest waves of demonstration in years, festival organizers have decided to take a look at relationships between cinema and politics. We ask the question about what is the revolutionary potential of the film medium and whether the camera can be an effective tool in that struggle. Titles featured in the Cinema of Resistance section recall the spirit of former rebels and showcase contemporary strategies of engaged cinema. 

The complete festival program is available here.

Tickets will go in sale at www.nowehoryzonty.pl and the New Horizons Cinema on July 19th at 12 noon.

Film stills, trailers and press material available here.

Media contact:

Agata Burdzy
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