Eryk Lubos in Jan Jakub Kolski's "To Kill a Beaver"
Poland awards cinematographers at the Plus Camerimage International Film Festival , with Jan Jakub Kolski’s "hit-man thriller" chosen as Best Polish Film for cinematography by Michał Pakulski
In Jan Jakub Kolski’s film, an ex-soldier is caught by the demons of his traumatic past. Eryk Lubos plays a 37-year-old paranoid veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who comes back to his deserted family home to prepare for a rescue action. There he meets a 17-year-old girl who changes his life. To Kill a Beaver has received the Journalist’s Prize at the 47th International Film Festival at Karlovy Vary, with Lubos awarded ex aequo with the Norwegian Henrik Rafaelsenat for Best Male Role. Stephen Dalton writing for the Hollywood Reporter calls Kolski's film a "hit-man thriller", and adds "Though acclaimed in Poland for his magical realist style, Kolski keeps the action in To Kill a Beaver naturalistic, lean and gripping. In one bravura sequence, Eryk sets up a firing range in a nearby outbuilding, his point-of-view shots mirroring the jittery dynamics of violent computer games."
Plus Camerimage has been dedicated to cinematography and cinematographers since 1993; a rarity among international film festivals, it is considered the world's largest festival in this field and took place in Bydgoszcz, Poland, between the 24th of November and 1st of December 2012. The festival awards films according to visual, aesthetic and technical values, focusing on the success of cinematography to convey a film's message. Plus Camerimage brings together directors, cinematographers and actors from Poland and around the world in an event that Screendaily calls the world’s oldest festival dedicated to cinematographers.
Apart from the main competition, the Festival also encompasses a Polish Films Competition, a Documentary Films Competition, a Student Etudes Competition, Feature Debutes Competition, the Music Videos Competition, the Plus Camerimage Market, the Plus Camerimage Forum, special shows, premieres, all kinds of reviews of films and retrospectives, as well as accompanying events such as exhibitions and concerts. Each year, the organizers of the festival grant a cinematographer a Lifetime Achievement Award.
The 2012 Camerimage was the 20th edition of the festival and hosted 314 films. The Festival’s main prize, the Golden Frog, went to Canadian cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc, who shot Kim Nguyena’s drama about teenagers fighting with a rebel army in the Democratic Republic of Congo Rebelle. The Silver Frog was given to French cinematographer Caroline Champetier for her work on Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, and the Bronze Frog went to Iranian cinematographe Touraj Aslani for Bahman Ghobadi’s Rhino Season, "a love story in context of the political changes from before the Iranian revolution to the present".
Sources: culture.pl, Canadian Society of Cinematographers, Hollywood Reporter, Plus Camerimage awards 2012
Editor: Marta Jazowska