Cheap Is Beautiful: Microbudget Films From Poland

najlepsze_filmy_mikrobudzetowe.jpg, default, ‘Wieża. Jasny dzień’, directed by Jagoda Szelc, photo: Against Gravity; ‘Tyle co nic’, directed by Grzegorz Dębowski, photo: Oleksandr Pozdnyakov / St, center, #000000

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A provincial western and a black-and-white love ballad, a metaphysical feminist horror, a daring portrait of Generation Z and dystopian science fiction from Silesia. Here are the best Polish low-budget films of the past decade.

Their creators prove that less is more in art and that talent, commitment and determination make overcoming many budget constraints possible. They have a small crew, simple tools, a limited number of locations and a few actors at their disposal. Despite this, they create films whose quality exceeds productions made for several million zlotys. We invite you to get to know the 9 best microbudget films of recent years.

‘Next to Nothing’, directed by Grzegorz Dębowski (2023)

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Still from ‘Tyle co nic’, directed by Grzegorz Dębowski, 2023, photo: Oleksandr Pozdnyakov / Studio Munka SFP

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Awards for best screenplay and best directorial début at the Gdynia Festival, Nagroda Złotego Pazura (Golden Claw Award), laurels for best actor and supporting actress and finally – Orzeł (an Eagle) for director Grzegorz Dębowski, who was the discovery of the year. These are just some of the awards that Tyle co nic (Next to Nothing) has won in recent months.

If the evaluation of films were based on the price-to-quality ratio, Grzegorz Dębowski’s film would be among the absolute best films made in Poland – because of the tiny budget and the number of awards won and the film’s artistic quality.

While the costs of average feature films are rising higher and higher every year, Grzegorz Dębowski made his début film for 1.5 million zlotys. Financial constraints that could have paralysed many productions were either avoided or even turned to the creators’ advantage. Instead of tons of film equipment, the creators had to rely on a hand-held camera (great cinematography by Aleksander Pozdnyakov) and shooting in natural light, and instead of inviting us to spectacular film locations, they organized a trip around the ordinary but thoroughly real world of Polish villages for viewers. Unable to afford great stars, they discovered their own: the phenomenal Artur Paczesny and Agnieszka Kwietniewska. It is thanks to their talent, as well as the sensitivity and craftsmanship of Grzegorz Dębowski, that a provincial western about the last righteous man was created, a film full of tenderness towards the world and other people. Great little cinema.

‘Tower. A Bright Day’, directed by Jagoda Szelc (2017)

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Still from ‘Wieża. Jasny dzień’, directed by Jagoda Szelc, 2018, photo: Against Gravity

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Among the nine titles listed here, Jagoda Szelc’s motion picture may look like an arthouse blockbuster. Wieża. Jasny dzień (Tower. A Bright Day) cost ‘a whole’ 2.3 million zlotys.

In her début, Jagoda Szelc used this money to make one of the most spectacular and characteristic débuts of recent decades – she combined a family drama with metaphysical horror, a feminist fairy tale and a story about a mystery. The young director received the Polityka Passport Award in the film category for this movie and the Gdynia award for best début.

Szelc impressed the audience not only with her original vision and courage in creating a film language but also with the freedom with which she entered into a dialogue with the masters of contemporary cinema: from Lanthimos and Polański to Jordan Peele. And – just like Dębowski – she discovered actors whose faces were previously unknown to the Polish film industry. It was thanks to Wieża that we were able see Rafał Cieluch on the big screen, charismatic but unused by Polish cinema, and, above all, Anna Krotoska, who broke into the mainstream of film with her role of a possessive mother.

‘Bread and Salt’, directed by Damian Kocur (2022)

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Bread and Salt I Official trailer I Chleb i sól I Oficjalny zwiastun

Another microbudget masterpiece on our list is the feature-length début of one of the most famous young talents of Polish cinema in recent years. Damian Kocur, while still a student at the Film School in Katowice, became known as a subversive author, willing to play with form (his short 1410 was, for example, a story about a knight and a squire who got lost on the way to Grunwald) and not afraid of radical artistic decisions. Suffice it to say that, already in his early études, Kocur relied on natural actors instead of employing professionals (including the wonderful Dalej jest dzień [Beyond Is the Day]), and he focused on improvisation instead of sticking rigidly to the script.

He also based his feature début on it – Chleb i sól (Bread and Salt) is a story about the search for identity, Polish xenophobia and fading youth. In the story of a young pianist who comes to his hometown for vacation, he combined documentary observation with a talent for building dramatic tensions. Filmed with amateurs and without a classically understood script, the film was built on improvisation and observational talent as part of the 60 minut (60 Minutes) program organized by Munk Studio. In 2022, it was one of the most awarded Polish films and won, among others, the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival (Orrizonti [Horizons] competition) and laurels at festivals in Gdynia, Antalya, Cottbus, Cairo and Gijón.

‘Ultima Thule’, directed by Klaudiusz Chrostowski (2023)

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‘Ultima Thule’, directed by Klaudiusz Chrostowski, photo: Madness

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Two men, a herd of sheep, an island in the middle of the ocean – that’s enough to create one of the greatest revelations of last year’s festival in Gdynia. However, there are certain conditions – you need to have the scriptwriting and directing talent of Klaudiusz Chrostowski, a well-coordinated team, unwavering faith in the project and Jakub Gierszał ready to devote his time in order to make the film happen for next to nothing.

This is how Ultima Thule was created, a beautiful, moving picture that won the title of the best Polish microbudget in 2023 and also won the Perspektywa Award for Klaudiusz Chrostowski. Michał Piepiórka wrote about it for Filmweb:

We don’t have many films like this in Polish cinema – they minimize film resources, limit the set design, throw out all unnecessary dialogues and even limit the time for describing the characters. ‘Ultima Thule’ has something of a documentary film about it – the naturalness of the staging, the realism of the conversation, many scenes look downright suspicious, as if directed by the wind or unruly animals.

Indeed, for one million zlotys, the débuting director made an artistically refined, beautifully filmed and thoroughly genuine story about escaping life, about loss, grief and remorse. He shot it in 17 days spent on the island of Foula, the most isolated part of the Shetland Archipelago, working with a microscopic crew, local amateur actors and the outstanding Gierszał, who created one of his best performances here.

‘Songs About Love’, directed by Tomasz Habowski (2021)

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‘Piosenki o miłości’, directed by Tomasz Habowski, photo: Gutek Film

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Janusz Wróblewski wrote for Polityka:

‘Piosenki o miłości’ [Songs About Love] delights on every level, although it is minimalist cinema. Tomasz Habowski débuted in the style of Richard Linklater (‘Before Sunrise’, ‘Boyhood’) or Mike Mills (‘C’mon C’mon’) – modest but stunning. The film ‘Piosenki o miłości’ conveys an effortless charm and a sense of truth that is almost unheard of in Polish youth cinema, although this is a very restrictive label.

Although Tomasz Habowski’s début film evoked the admiration of most Polish critics and attracted 65,000 viewers to cinemas (a more than decent result for such a cheap film), the path to its realization was not at all easy. The young creator had no directing experience, he did not graduate from film school, and he acquired his craft in working on a popular soap opera. When looking for a way to make Piosenki o miłości, he thought about the programs of Munk Studio and finally tried his luck at a microbudget program. For 700,000zł, he made a poetic, black-and-white story about dreams, ambitions and the pain of unfulfillment.

The small budget didn’t make things easier. The private flats of crew members sometimes had to serve as filming locations, pandemic restrictions additionally increased costs and, due to the suspicion of COVID in one of the people on the set, producer Marta Szarzyńska had to spend an additional 20,000zł to repeat it. Thanks to the persistence, professionalism and support of the stars (we see Tomasz Włosok, Andrzej Grabowski and Jowita Budnik on the screen), poetic cinema managed to be created that puts to shame most productions that are several times more expensive.

‘Supernova’, directed by Bartosz Kruhlik (2019)

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‘Supernova’, directed by Bartosz Kruhlik, 2019, depicted: Marcin Hycnar, photo: press materials

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This movie was born out of a little ‘cheat’. Originally, it was supposed to be a 60-minute film, one of several television productions made at Munk Studio by young artists. However, director Bartosz Kruhlik assumed that if you managed to catch a small fish, you should also make a go for a bigger one, and despite a very limited budget, he decided to extend his film to 78 minutes and make a full-length début.

In order to stay within the budget, Kruhlik and the cinematographer, Michał Dymek, spent weeks drawing up a series of shots, and in the home of one of the gentlemen, they even created a mock-up on which toy ‘autos’ pretended to be movie cars. Thanks to these ‘exercises’, they managed to plan the staging of a series of shots before the start of filming, and a film was created in fourteen days of shooting, recognized as the best début at the 2019 festival in Gdynia.

The list of awards he has won is much longer. It is no accident because, in a story about several characters whose fates intertwine due to a tragic road accident, Kruhlik managed to create an engaging drama in which – as in an ancient tragedy – there are no easy choices, simple solutions or innocent people.

‘The Last Strike of Hope’, directed by Piotr Biedroń (2023)

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Still from ‘W nich cała nadzieja’, directed by Piotr Biedroń, 2023, photo: Wiktor Obrok / Galapagos Films

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Doubtless no one in Poland believed that an intriguing dystopian science-fiction movie could be made for a million zlotys – no one except Piotr Biedroń, filmmaker and long-time ecological director of the Green Film Festival. In 2023, he presented his directorial début, made as part of the Polish Film Institute’s microbudget film program, showing that the impossible does not exist.

In the movie, he took viewers to a post-apocalyptic future, to a world where climate wars had long since raged, melted ice caps had managed to flood entire continents, and Earth had gotten rid of its greatest enemy – people. Not all of them though – among the few survivors were Ewa (Magdalena Wieczorek), who was in her twenties, and Artur, an old, dilapidated robot (speaking with the voice of Jacek Beler), which was created to ensure the girl’s safety, and in the course of the film’s events turns out to be the greatest threat to her.

Biedroń’s work featured motifs from Scott’s Blade Runner, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and even Cameron’s Terminator, and the most important topics turned out to be ecology and the perversely portrayed refugee crisis.

W nich cała nadzieja (The Last Strike of Hope) was proof of the incredible creativity of its authors. With only nine shooting days, Biedroń had to limit not only the number of characters but also that of locations. He shot his film in Łaziska Górne, on the largest rock heap in Europe, which, thanks to appropriate adaptation and several tons of scrap dragged up the mountain, turned into scenery worthy of a low-budget Mad Max.

‘Love Tasting’, directed by Dawid Nickel (2020)

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‘Ostatni Komers’, directed by Dawid Nickel, photo: Jakub Socha / Galapagos Films

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When Dawid Nickel’s début film was presented in Gdynia in 2020, it delighted not only the festival jurors and the young audience members waiting for true portrayals of their generation but also the people managing the Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej (Polish Film Institute). Ostatni komers (Love Tasting) was the first super hit of the microbudget program established several months earlier and proof that financing cheap débuts can bring unexpected benefits.

Dawid Nickel started making it without any directorial or scriptwriting credit to his name. After graduating from the Warsaw Film School, he worked as an assistant on three films by Małgorzata Szumowska, and later, at the Wajda School, he created a project for a film about teenagers, which would tell the story of the coming of age of generation Z in an artistically impressive form. His idea intrigued producer Marta Habior, thanks to whom it was soon made possible to obtain a microbudget subsidy of 700,000zł and then start producing the film.

‘It’s not a lot of money, so the responsibility was smaller. Because if it were five million and ten co-producers, suddenly everyone on the set would be watching over the story to make sure it was being told correctly’, said the director, speaking for Culture.pl. His film became a hit at the Gdynia festival, winning the award for best microbudget film but also the Young Jury statuette and distinction for actress Sandra Drzymalska and cinematographer Michał Pukowiec.

‘Elephant’, directed by Kamil Krawczyński (2022)

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‘Słoń’, directed by Kamil Krawczyński, photo: PISF

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The microbudget support program was created precisely for such films. Słoń (Elephant), a début film by Kamil Krawczyński, the author of the étude Ktoś zostanie ostatni (The Last One), which is acclaimed at festivals, is an example of thoroughly personal and very intimate cinema. Creating a story about the love of two young men, about the need for closeness and the simultaneous fear of it and, finally, about Polish homophobia, Krawczyński avoids big words and an elevated pitch. He tells his story in a half-whisper, trusting that the viewer will hear him.

When Słoń débuted in the microbudget film competition of the Gdynia festival, it won the award for ‘the most fulfilled début […], for a shamelessly romantic melodrama, a sincere and bold film’. The provincial, gay love story was compared (exaggeratedly, let’s admit that) to Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name, as well as to Andrew Haigh’s great films. Not bad for a film made for 700,000zł.

Translated from Polish by Michał Abel Pelczar

Language English