On September 19th the next edition of the Encounters Film Festival in Bristol will begin. This year the Festival will be showcasing a great selection of Polish cinema. People in the UK will have a chance to see almost 50 Polish documentary, animation and short fiction films.

Encounters Film Festival is the UK's leading short film and animation festival, which takes place in Bristol. The Festival's priority is to present, support and develop new and rising talents in film and animation. The 23rd edition of the Festival will last from 19-24 September 2017.

Four Polish films have been officially selected for the Festival. The audience will see "Close Ties" by Zofia Kowalewska, "Penciless Case" by Magdalena Pilecka, "Strange Case" by Zbigniew Czapla and "Pussy" by Renata Gąsiorowska.

However it is only the beginning of the Polish presence in Bristol. The Krakow Film Foundation prepared this year the Polish Voices programme, which will present the best Polish short films made by and talking about women.

The Polish Voices programme has been divided into five sections. The first one includes animations from the last few years: "Darling" by Izabela Plucińska, "The Governance of Love" by Adela Kaczmarek, "Endemit's Greed" by Natalia Dziedzic, "Of a Forest" by Katarzyna Melnyk, "But She's Nice" by Tomasz Pilarski, "Fences" by Natalia Krawczuk and "Home" by Agnieszka Borowa.

The next section titled "Close Ties" depicts family relations. In this section the audience will see "Daughter" by Tomasz Wolski, "Ab Ovo" by Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi, "The Mother" by Łukasz Ostalski, "Second Life" by Eugeniusz Pankov and "All Soul's Day" by Aleksandra Terpińska.

The third part of the programme will be devoted to the classic documentaries produced between 1967 and 1999. Among the selected films we can find: "24 Hours of Jadwiga L." by Krystyna Gryczełowska, "Seven Women at Different Ages" by Krzysztof Kieślowski, "Everyone Knows Who They Are Standing Behind" by Maria Zmarz-Koczanowicz, "Day After Day" by Irena Kamieńska, "Such a Nice Boy I Gave Birth To" by Marcin Koszałka and "The Sisters" by Paweł Łoziński.

The next section titled "Love, Love" consists of Grzegorz Zariczny's film of the same title as well as "To Thy Heart" by Ewa Borysewicz, "Afternoon" by Izabela Plucińska, "Fragments" by Agnieszka Woszczyńska, "Daniel" by Anastazja Dąbrowska and "Creatures" by Tessa Moult-Milewska.

The last part of the "Polish Voices" programme is "My House Without Me" – here again the title was borrowed from one of the films in the section – a documentary by Magdalena Szymkow. Apart from it in this section we will see "Tenants" by Klara Kochańska, "The Incredibly Elastic Man" by Karolina Specht, "Domestication" by Sylwia Gaweł and "Super Unit" by Teresa Czepiec.

Yet it is still not the end of the Polish events in Bristol. There will be also two other sections at Encounters under the auspices of Polish Animation Producers Association.

The first one will be devoted to Polish animation series for kids. The audience will see one episode of the following productions: "Hug Me" by Mateusz Jarmulski, "Mami Fatale" by Robert Jaszczurowski, "Basia and the Heat" by Marcin Wasilewski, "Kacperiada" by Kamil Polak, "Florka's Diary" by Piotr Rogowski and "Hip Hip Hurra" by Szymon Adamski.

The last section celebrates the 50th birthday of Reksio, a Polish animation protagonist, which debuted on screens exactly 50 years ago. In the section titled "Who Let the Dogs Out" we will see animations from the 50's and the 60's: "Little Mouse and Cat" by Władysław Nehrebecki, "Little Western" by Witold Giersz, "Little Car" by Lucjan Dembiński, "Stripes Adventure" by Alina Maliszewska and the selected episodes of "Reksio".

The Polish Voices programme was co-created by the Krakow Film Foundation, which will be represented in Bristol by Marta Świątek. The project is co-financed by the Polish Film Institute.

Encounters Film Festival will last from 19-24 September, and screenings of Polish productions will take place from 20-23 September.

SEPTEMBER 2017