Ida is a story about Polish identity forming at the junction of two historical dramas: the Holocaust and Stalinism. Ida tells the story of an orphaned young woman brought up by nuns in a convent. Before she decides to take her vows, she discovers a dark family secret dating back to the years of the Nazi occupation. Along with her only living relative, a former communist judge, she returns to her home town where her family are buried. There, she finds out that her family was Jewish, and that she was baptised as a child to save her from the Holocaust. It is a clash of personalities and the opportunity to learn her tragic family history.
The award from the Sarasota Film Festival is just one of many prizes, both Polish and international, won by Ida. It received the MEDIA European Talent Prize, the FIPRESCI Jury Prize in the Special Presentations section at the 38th International Film Festival in Toronto, and four awards at the 38th Gdynia Film Festival (the biggest film festival in Poland)– the Golden Lion for Best Film, Best Cinematography, Best Actress for Agata Kulesza (one of the most famous Polish actresses) and Best Art Direction for Katarzyna Sobańska. Ida also won best film at the 29th Warsaw Film Festival, the 57th London Film Festival and the 21st Plus Camerimage International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography. At the Festival Internacional de Cine de Gijón, Ida received 4 awards, including Best Film and Best Art Direction.
Ida’s cinematographers, Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski, also received international awards. They won the Golden Frog, which is the main prize of the International Film Festival of the Cinematography Art - Camerimage, and received prestigious awards from the American and Polish societies of cinematographers. Paweł Pawlikowski was also awarded at festivals in Vilnius and Minsk.
The award from an American film festival may be a chance for the Paweł Pawlikowski film to extend its overseas distribution. So far, Ida has been presented in several European countries, including in the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium. When the Pawlikowski film was launched in Italian cinemas in March 2014, critics there were stunned. Paolo D'Agostino of La Reppublica wrote:
Ida is a gripping, powerful, transparent film. (...) It emits the scent of the "new cinema" of the East at the turn of the 50s and 60s (the first Polański and Skolimowski movies, or is a development of Wajda’s wonderful Ashes and Diamonds
Pawlikowski's film turned out to be a big hit in France, where it was seen by over 450,000 cinema-goers, four times more than in Poland.
This year's Sarasota Film Festival was the 16th edition of the event. Its organizers presented nearly 180 films, documentaries and animated films from different continents, bringing contemporary cinema in its various forms to American audiences.
Sources: www.indiewire.com, www.sarasotafilmfestival.com, PISF. ed. BS, translated: Katarzyna Maksimiuk, 15.04.2014