Still from Grzegorz Zariczny's "The Whistle", photo: Studio Munka
Grzegorz Zariczny’s documentary The Whistle wins the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival 2013.
"We managed to make a very honest story about a young man who tries to make something of his life", filmmaker Grzegorz Zariczny said in an interview for Trójka radio. The protagonist of Gwizdek / The Whistle is thirtysomething Marcin from a small town near Kraków. He is in no hurry to enter adult life. His reluctance meets with his mother’s disapproval. She expects him to make decisions and take action, specifically to find a better job and a wife. Marcin is trying to make it as a football referee. Every week at amateur matches he has to listen to rough comments and opinions about his work from players and fans.
"I wanted to talk about someone normal […]," director Zariczny tells Lech Moliński in an interview for the Portal Filmowy website. "It seems to be the norm that there are movies about doctors, lawyers, very educated people, and so few about normal people. […] I also want to give something to the protagonists, similarly to [the work of director] Jacek Bławut. […]. I didn’t want the director or the film crew to be the most important figures of the film, because that leaves the protagonist at the far end."
Current films with football themes include Marcin Koszałka’s Będziesz legendą, człowieku / You Will Be a Legend, Man, about two members of the Polish national team, Damien Perquis and Marcin Wasilewski, which comes out in 2013, and Emir Kusturica’s portrait of Diego Maradona, Maradona by Kusturica. The Referees by Yves Hinant, Eric Cardot and Delphine Leherice explores similar terrain to The Whistle, which Zariczny took from his experience as referee, as he explained in the Portal Filmowy interview,
I decided to about something that touched me personally, and being a referee hurt me a bit. […] I was confronted with the brutal environment of football fans, football players, who constantly scream for I don’t know what reasons, who always have a problem with pretty much everything, while I as a referee was always trying to do my best out there on the field. Moreover, the 2012 Euro was approaching so I felt that this could be a topic for which I could easily get funding.
Grzegorz Zariczny was born in 1983 near Kraków. He left geography studies in 2005 to study directing at Śląsk University, and finished the documentary course at the Andrzej Wajda Master School, where he made the documentary Marysina Polana / The Dog Hill, which received domestic and international awards. The Whistle was made as part of the Andrzej Munk Studio's First Documentary programme, and has brought home awards from the New Horizons Film Festival 2012 and the Young and Film Festival 2012.
The awards were presented at a ceremony in Park City, Utah. The Whistle was one of 65 shorts chosen for the Sundance competition, from 8,102 entries. Trevor Groth, Director of Programming for the Sundance Film Festival, said, "Our Short Film program this year represented a broad range of extraordinary short filmmaking talent, showcasing the diverse approaches to storytelling that one can achieve with limited time. The short film awards further distinguish those that pushed the medium in new directions and affected audiences in powerful and lasting ways."
The Whistle is the fifth Polish short to be chosen for Sundance in the last four years. The competition in 2012 included Grzegorz Jaroszuk’s short fiction Frozen Stories, a tongue-in-cheek story about a young man and woman – the two worst supermarket employees – and Jakub Stożek documentary Out of Reach won the Special Mention in 2011.
The Sundance festival in 2013 features Polish director Jacek Borcuch’s second film in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition: Lasting, the slow, irreversible decomposition of a seemingly well-organised world. The film brought its cinematrographer - Michał Englert the Best Cinematography Award.
The annual Sundance Film Festival, a leading American festival since its inception in 1978, is now among the important film events promoting international independent cinema.
Sources: culture.pl, Sundance, Polish Shorts, Sundance
Editor: Marta Jazowska