Ida Fights for European Oscar: Time to Vote!
Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida is among the six films in contention for the European Film Awards' People's Choice Award. The public can choose the winner in an internet vote which finishes on 31st October.
Apart from Ida, the films nominated for this year’s audience award are Nymphomaniac by Lars Von Trier, Philomena by Stephen Frears, The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Felix Hangren, The Beauty and the Beast by Christophe Gans and Two Days, One Night by the Dardenne brothers. The People’s Choice Award is one of the most important awards on the road to an Oscar.
Voting for the best European film of the past year will last until 31th October, and the netizens of the old continent can take part. Voters will also have the chance to win a trip to the European Film Awards ceremony, which will take place on 13th December in Riga.
Ida has already received many prestigious awards and has been distributed in dozens of countries around the globe, including Spain, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Belgium and Germany. Paweł Pawlikowski’s film was also a great financial success in French and American cinemas. In France, the film was viewed by almost 500,000 people (compared to barely 110,000 in Poland in the same time), and it has already earned almost 4 million dollars in the USA, thus becoming one of the two most watched non-English language films (along with the Indian Taste of Curry).
Ida admired by British and American critics
The immense interest of audiences was fuelled by excellent reviews from critics. In Godfrey Cheshire's review at the RogerEbert.com website, which gave Ida four out of four possible stars, he noted the craftsmanship of the two Polish cameramen – Ryszard Lenczewski and Łukasz Żal:
Filmed in the unusual, boxy aspect ratio of 1.37:1, and most often deployed in static long shots, the film’s images sometimes suggest Vermeer lighting with the color taken away, and the compositions manage to seem at once classical and off-handed (…) As in Bresson, the effect is to draw the viewer’s eye into the beauty of the image while simultaneously maintaining a contemplative distance from the drama.
Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter complimented Agata Kulesza's acting:
Wanda remains the most vividly drawn character. Always speaking with prosecutorial bluntness whether it be to Ida or some man who's trying to pick her up in a bar (…) Kulesza plays her superbly…
Reviews from Britain, where the film hit screens in the last week of September, are in the same vein. Tim Robey of The Telegraph gave Ida the highest marks possible, claiming it to be ‘immaculately, even a little self-consciously, a masterwork’, and concluding: ‘There’s something eerily perfect about it, quite complete’.
Other reviewers from the British Isles also appreciate the discretion of Pawlikowski’s film, in which “nothing is shouted out loud and the most painful matters are whispered.”
Ida on the way to Oscar
The European Film Awards is one of the most important stepping stones to an Oscar nomination for European films. Ida is one of the favourites of both the European contest and this year’s edition of the American Academy Awards. Perhaps Paweł Pawlikowski is to be the first Polish director awarded for the best non-English language film. Despite eight Polish films being nominated for Oscars for foreign language film, none has received the Oscar statuette yet.
Vote for Ida a the European Film Awards' website.
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