Blue Room (Niebieski Pokój), dir. Tomasz Siwiński; ‘15min Animation (Poland/ France), 2013
A Blue Room tells a story of a man in a coma. The patient’s critical condition evokes dreamy, disturbing visions which deal with his memories and fears. Imprisoned in a blue room, he needs to settle with his past to feel free again
Festival Screenings: Espace Miramar – 17/05/14, 2pm
Espace Miramar – 18/05/14, 8pm
Theatre Alexandre III – 20/05/14 – 18.30
Fragments (Fragmenty) dir. Agnieszka Woszczyńska ‘25min Poland 2013
"Fragments" - a collection of loosely connected scenes, depicting a breakdown of a relationship and a collapse of the world to which the main female character is desperately clinging on to. Anna and her partner have well-paid jobs, intense sex and go jogging every other morning. They live comfortable yet monotonous bourgeois life. That makes Anna slowly fall apart.
Festival screenings: Theatre Croisette 23/05/14 – 2pm
Studio 13 24/05/14 - 6pm
Refugiado (Pod ochroną), dir. Diego Lerman; ‘95min Argentina/ Poland/ France/ Columbia/ Germany 2014
7 year old Matías returns home from a friend’s birthday party to find his mother, Laura, unconscious on the floor. When she recovers her senses they decide to leave home and rush to a shelter for abused women where they spend 48 hours before Laura decides to rebuild her life somewhere else. Through the eyes of Matías we will discover their escape in a city where everything Matías once knew feels dangerous and foreign until Laura finds a secure place to raise her son.
Festival screenings: Theatre Croisette 18/05/14 – 12.00
Theatre Croisette 18/05/14 – 20.30
Cinema les Arcades/ Salle 1 19/05/14 – 11.30
Studio 13 19/05/14 – 21.30
Cinema Alexandre III 21/05/14 – 16.00
Le Hasard (Przypadek) dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski, ‘122min Poland, 1981
Facing an unclear future, Witek, an earnest young Polish medical student, chooses to put his education on hold. With his head full of the promising and ominous portents of his new adult life, Witek hurries to catch the last train to Warsaw. But as he races down the platform, Blind Chance blossoms into three successive scenarios in which Witek's catching or missing his train spawns three completely different futures. Whether as an idealistic Communist Party member, an ambivalent dissident or a devoted healer and husband, the young Pole’s destiny is shaped by the unhappy youth threatening to hobble him, the troubled present poised to engulf him and, in Kieslowski’s words, “the powers that meddle with our fate.”
Festival Screening – Bonuel, 15/05/14 – 19.30
Field of Dogs (Psie Pole), dir Lech Majewski. ‘114min Poland, 2014
Father ploughs a supermarket with oxen, the plough ripping up tiles. A girl in a bikini tempts the hero on the snowy slopes of the Matterhorn. A forest full of the dead and Niagara falling onto a cathedral altar. These are the visions of Adam, a poet who has lost his beloved in a car crash. He gives up his job as professor of literature to work at a supermarket checkout. Yet all he wants is to sleep, escaping from his painful reality. For him the only text to read in these hard times in Divine Comedy. And it is Dante’s masterpiece that brings back some meaning to Adam’s life.
Market Screening – Riviera 1 – 16/05/14 – 18.00
Jack Strong dir Władysław Pasikowski, ‘127min Poland 2014
Jack Strong is a spy thriller based on a true story of a man who dared to challenge the Soviets by himself from within the communist system. As a Polish colonel and chief military planner of the maneuvers of the Warsaw Pact troops, he realized that the American plan of nuclear counterattack against the Soviets may bring nuclear annihilation to Poland. Determined to prevent that, he started a long, lonely and psychologically exhausting cooperation with the CIA. His own, as well as his family’s lives have been in jeopardy since then.
Market Screenings – Lerins 2 – 15/05/14 – 18.00
Riviera 1 – 17/05/14 – 18.00
Life Feels Good (Chce się żyć), dir. Maciej Piepszyca ‘107min, Poland 2013
Enthusiastically received and awarded Grand Prix at the most recent International Film Festival in Montreal, the film inspired by actual events is a story of Mateusz suffering from cerebral palsy. Deemed a “vegetable” by doctors and people around him, Mateusz is brought up by his loving parents who don’t accept the medical diagnosis, believing in his full intellectual ability despite communication problems. When he meets a new doctor practicing experimental methods of treatment, his condition changes and he turns out to be completely normal, intelligent man. His will to live and staying in good spirits give him a power to overcome his limitations.
Market Screening: Gray 4 – 16/05/14 – 17.30
Stones for The Rampart (Kamienie na Szaniec), ‘115min, Poland, 2014
Rudy, Zośka , Alek. The heroes of the Grey Ranks. Their tale of youth, love and friendship. Of heroism at great costs and of the battle that became a legend. They were young, they fell in love and wanted to live life to the fullest. Nothing seemed impossible. One day, however, their world fell apart; they had to abandon their dreams. The choice they had to face was to either bow down in humility or to put their own lives on the line.
In spite of their lack of experience and weapons, they found the inner courage and strength to rise against the Nazi occupants in the name of freedom. They were like “stones thrown by God for the ramparts”...
Market Screening: Gray 1 – 18/05/14 – 14.00
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