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Polish short films embark
on a trip around the world

There has been a boom in Polish short film cinema recently and representing this thriving period is this edition of POLISH SHORTS. It is comprised of a broad spectrum of short films produced mostly by a fresh young generation of Polish auteurs. There are 12 titles including 5 short feature films, 4 documentaries and 3 animated films.The majority were produced at the legendary Polish National School of Film, Television and Theater in Łódź. Others are the product of the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing or were produced within the framework of the exceptionally prolific ‘30 minutes’ program. These films represent both a traditional and a more daring approach to film artistry. They attempt to not only depict reality but also to experiment with form in search of their own language, which in the future may have a significant influence on the shape of Polish full-length feature cinema.

A growing number of short features have won awards at international film festivals, such as those by Izabela Plucińska, Tomasz Wolski, and Katarzyna Klimkiewicz, to name a few. Polish short films have embarked on a trip around the world but it is the world itself that finds its refection in these films. The interests of these young Polish creators are not limited to merely localized issues. Plucińska, in her animated film Esterhazy, looks subversively at the fall of the Berlin Wall; Klimkiewicz, in her motion picture study Hanoi – Warsaw, pries into the lives of Vietnamese immigrants in Poland; and Lesław Dobrucki, in his original documentary Little Bride, takes a closer look at the fate of a young Turkish girl forced into marriage. More and more often, Polish short films are the works of foreign students who study and work in Poland, namely: Matej Bobrik from Slovakia, Magnus von Horn from Sweden and Linn Karen Foerland from Norway. This openness to the world accompanied by the fine traditions of Polish short film results in the genre’s outstanding liveliness today.