The second Polish candidate in this category, Our Curse by Tomasz Śliwiński, is a dramatic story about a disease, which affects life of an entire family. The young director has turned his camera back at himself and his relatives, in an attempt to better understand his own fears and the surrounding world. In the film, he focuses on the disease of his son Leo, who was born with Ondine’s curse (congenital central hypoventilation syndrome / CCHS), which causes cessation of breathing during sleep and necessitates a life-long mechanical ventilation. It is suffered by approximately three hundred people worldwide, and seventeen people in Poland.
Announced as Best Documentary Short was Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 produced by HBO and directed by Ellen Goosenberg Kent and Dany Perry. The film tells the story of a crisis hotline for war veterans who face depression and suicidal thoughts. It has been a definite favourite in this category.
Joanna and Our Curse are not the first Polish documentary films to be nominated for an Oscar. They have joined a collection of such prominent pictures as 89mm from Europe (89 mm od Europy) by Marcel Łoziński, The Children of Leningradsky (Dzieci z Leningradzkiego) by Hanna Polak and Andrzej Celiński and Bartek Konopka’s Rabbit à la Berlin (Królik po berlińsku).
Costume Design winner: Milena Canonero
A Pole was also competing for an Academy Award in the Best Costume Design category. Anna Biedrzycka Sheppard was nominated for her work for the film Witch by Robert Stromberg. The Award, for which the rest of the nominees included Coleen Atwood for costumes in Into the Woods, Mark Bridges for Inherent Vice, and Jacqueline Durran for Mr. Turner, went to Milena Canonero for the costume design in The Grand Budapest Hotel.
This was the Polish designer’s third Oscar nomination. In the past, she was nominated for her designs in Schindler’s List by Steven Spielberg and in The Pianist by Roman Polański.
