The FIPRESCI Warsaw Critics Project has returned to the 36th Warsaw International Film Festival, which runs from October 9 to 18, 2020. The training programme for young critics and film journalists from Central and Eastern Europe is co-ordinated by the Warsaw Film Foundation and FIPRESCI,…
Mateusz Tarwacki Poland
Born in 1993. Film critic. He graduated with a specialization in "visual culture" at the Institute of Polish Culture of the University of Warsaw. He published, among others, on the Notebook for 6 Weeks and in the scientific magazine View. Theories and…
Azra Deniz Okyay’s striking debut Ghosts (2020) marks another invigorating moment in Turkish cinema.
There’s never silence in Istanbul. At the outskirts or in the center, skyscrapers and office buildings slowly rise, transforming the local landscape into a cold city of the future. But what…
Preparations to be Together For an Unknown Period of Time (Felkészülés meghatározatlan ideig tartó együttlétre, 2020) is Hungarian director Lili Horvát’s second feature, and an intimate study of a person’s mind. Visually stunning, the film focuses on love, loneliness, and obsession - to which Horvat…
Mateusz Tarwacki and Georgiana Mușat talked to Ksawery Szczepanik, the director of Going for Gold (2020).
The Psychology of a Star by Mateusz Tarwacki
Going for Gold by Ksawery Szczepanik is a documentary about the icon of Polish athletics, Władysław Kozakiewicz. The pole vaulter became famous at the…
At first glance Going for Gold (2020) by Ksawery Szczepanik has everything that any standard TV – usually American – documentary: talking heads, archival materials and a pinch of charming special effects to make the projection pleasant. But the production of the Polish director has…
Václav Havel is a legendary figure in the political and cultural history of Czech Republic. His life has been covered in several documentary films over the years, but Havel (2020) must be one of the most ambitious biopics to fictionalise the former playwright's rise as…
Everything starts with death. It doesn’t make Unidentified (Neidentificat, 2020) different from other detective movies where a lonely policeman follows the track of the crime. But is it really the goal to solve it? Bogdan George Apetri takes the viewer for what looks like a…
Almost there, but not quite – although rough around the edges, Cecília Feméri’s debut shows off her potential.
Contrary to its association-evoking name, Spiral (Spirál, 2020), the debut feature film of Cecília Feméri, is quite a straightforward downward journey into the intricacies of rural life.…
Magnezja, rez. Maciej Bochniak
While the title may be misleading, Magnesium (Magnezja, 2020), directed by Maciej Bochniak, is rather about an unavoidable malign magnetism to gold and power, set around 1920, where contracts are usually sealed in blood - this is the far far east, after…