FIRST ENGLISH AWARD FOR “NORMAL PEOPLE”

Yesterday brought good news to Piotr Złotorowicz. His “Normal people” has won the Best Student Short Feature category at English Stoke Your Fires Film Festival.

The organizers of the festival received more than 300 submissions across seven categories. As well as an exciting and eclectic programme of film screenings, each year the festival delivers a series of professional development master classes and industry focused events enabling  filmmakers of all stages of their career to learn new skills and techniques and the opportunity to network with other industry professionals. On Tuesday’s evening the winners were announced – among them there was a student fiction by Złotorowicz – “Normal people” that was presented an award for the Best Student Short Feature.

The film is a story of a young man Daniel, who just after being released from prison is trying to start a new life. He finds a job, renovates his flat and struggles to help his mother get through her alcoholism. He wants to live just like all the others do. Although seemingly everything starts to make sense, life still isn‘t favourable to him. When, due to an innocent mistake, he loses his job, his mother returns to the bottle and a women he just met turns him away for an unknown reason, nothing can be restored. The „normality“ reffered to in the title is reversed, as in Złotorowicz’s film normal people are those who are lone, lost and are constantly struggling with everyday life. Once normality turns out to be pathology protagonists get caught in a vicious circle. The film was produced by Polish National Film School in Łódź.

Festival Stroke Your Fires was held between 1st and 5th March. More to be found at its official website