Dariusz Chojnacki and Marcin Dorociński in Marcin Krzyształowicz's "Manhunt"
Marcin Krzyształowicz's film Manhunt, a Second World War drama of betrayal and retribution, wins the main competition of the Off Plus Camera Festival, while Katarzyna Rosłaniec's Baby Blues is named Best Polish Film
It is the first time in the festival's six years of operations that a Polish film won the main competition. But Manhunt is not just any film. It is a shady portrayal of the ambiguous legacy of the Second World War, considered one of the best Polish films of the decade.
The single Polish film featured in the main Making Way competition, it was in the running with 11 films from around the world. "A morality play about universal values, a story about evil that lurks in the human," the film 's script is loosely based on the story of the director's father. Breaking with heroic portrayals of the noble Polish fighter, Manhunt shows various facades of wartime behavior: human choices, selfishness and self-preservation.
Rosłaniec's Baby Blues , a portrayal of young people lost in our consumerist society and grabbing any inch of evidence that resembles real interhuman relations, won the Best Polish Film category. The film has garnered other awards, including the Crystal Bear for Best Film of the Generation 14plus section and a Special Mention from the International Jury at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. Baby Blues' main protagonist, played by Magdalena Berus - known for her role in Jacek Borcuch's Lasting - was recognised by Off Plus Camera as Best Actress. An amateur actress, Baby Blues was her debut film.
The International Festival of Independent Cinema Off Plus Camera brings the most interesting independent films from the Sundance, Toronto and Rotterdam festivals to Kraków. Heading this year’s jury for the Making Way main competition was Lech J. Majewski, the Polish film and theatre director, painter, photographer, writer, set designer and producer who works in the U.S., Brazil, and other parts of the world. He created buzz in 2010 with the premiere of the Polish-Swedish production The Mill and the Cross, which journeys into the world of Pieter Bruegel 's 16th-century painting Procession to Calvary. A marriage of high art and contemporary blockbuster, a synthesis of film, painting and literature, Majewski's film explored Bruegel's world of symbols and re-created the panoramic landscape of the time of Christ, crowded with hundreds of villagers and red-caped horsemen.
The festival programme is divided into thematic sections ranging from Faces of Crisis, which gathers documentaries and features shedding light on the global economic crisis including Curtis Hanson’s Too Big to Fail, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Detropia, John Wells The Company Men and Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles, to Dark Stars Rising, a section prepared by Shade Rupe, world-class expert on cult cinema, which presents cinema bordering on mainstream and niche culture – the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Andy Warhol and Jeffrey Schwarz. For the first time, the 2013 Off Plus Camera edition includes Best Actor and Best Actress competitions.
Among the festival selections, spread out in different categories, are ten Polish films.
Polish films at Off Plus Camera:
Leszek Dawid – You Are God
Andrzej Jakimowski – Imagine
Katarzyna Rosłaniec – Baby Blues
Anna Wieczur-Bluszcz – Being Like Kazimierz Deyna
Piotr Trzaskalski – My Father’s Bike
Sławomir Fabicki – Loving
Jacek Borcuch – Lasting
Tomasz Wasilewski – In a Bedroom
Józef and Michał Skolimowski – Ixjana
Marcin Krzyształowicz - Manhunt
Sources: article by Bartosz Staszczyszyn for culture.pl, Off Plus camera
Editor: MJ, 04.04.2013