"SNAILS" WIN THE AUDIENCE AWARD AT AFI DOCS
"Snails" directed by Grzegorz Szczepaniak won the Audience Award for the Best Short Film at AFI Docs, the prestigious documentary film festival organised by American Film Institute.
At the 14th edition of AFI Docs, 94 documentary films from 30 countries were shown. This year, among the guests there were: Judd Apatow, Ramin Bahrani, Heidi Ewing, Alex Gibney, Rachel Grady, Werner Herzog (this year's winner of the honorary award AFI Docs Guggenheim Symposium) and Barbara Kopple. The highlight of the festival included also the meetings of the film-makers with people from the great world of politics - representatives of the White House and the ambassador of Germany in the USA, Peter Wittig.
AFI Docs Audience Award went to the film "Snails" directed by Grzegorz Szczepaniak. This is a special award - at the most important documentary film festival in the USA participate numerous American and international selectors, film-makers and documentary film-makers.
"Snails" had its Polish première at the 55th Krakow Film Festival and was shown within the frames of the International Documentary Film Festival "Sunny Side of the Doc" in La Rochelle, as well as at the 19th Rhode Island International Film Festival. "Snails" participated in the 31st. Warsaw Film Festival (Polish Short Film Panorama) and in the 58th DOK.Leipzig (International Programme Short Film). The film won the Silver Eye Award at the 7th East Silver Market, a honorary special mention at the 22nd Etiuda & Anima in Krakow and the Special Mention for a humorous approach to the documentary film art at the 22nd IFF "Listapad" in Minsk. In April 2016 it won the audience award at Go Short - International Short Film Festival in Nijmegen in the Netherlands ("Snails" participated in the Student Competition BREAKING SHORTS) and participated in "It's All True" ("É Tudo Verdade") in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the most important documentary film festival in South America.
In the programme, apart from "Snails" by Grzegorz Szczepaniak, there are two other Polish short films - "The Great Theatre" by Sławomir Batyra and "Two Worlds," directed by the graduate of Wajda School, Maciej Adamek.
More information about the awards is available on the website of AFI Docs.