Present at the announcement were EFA Director Marion Döring, executive producer Jürgen Biesinger, EFA Board Member Krzysztof Zanussi, the film composer Zbigniew Preisner, the director of the Polish Film institute Agnieszka Odorowicz, and Roman Gutek, European Capital of Culture film curator.

Wroclaw is home to Poland’s biggest film festival and has a long filmmaking tradition dating back to the Wroclaw Feature Film Studio, created in 1954. Productions coming out of Warsaw included Ashes and Diamonds by Andrzej Wajda, Polanski’s debut Knife in the Water, Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Scar, and The Lonely Woman by Agnieszka Holland, the current chairwoman of the EFA Board.

“Wrocław has always been a very important place for Polish cinema. While remembering about our heritage, we want to create a new image of Polish cinematography. We host the biggest film festival in Poland, we have the largest art house cinema in Europe, where not only we screen the most outstanding masterpieces of world cinema, but where we also educate and have discussions about films. Most of all, we have a very strong film community and remarkable audience, which is worth doing all we can to ensure that cinema still remains an important part of the city’s cultural and social life,” said Rafał Dutkiewicz, Mayor of Wroclaw.