FIPRESCI Announces a New Collaboration with Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival

In the frame of its celebration of the 100-year anniversary, The International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) announces a new collaboration with the renowned Millennium Docs Against Gravity (MDAG), Poland’s flagship documentary film festival and second-largest documentary film festival in Europe after IDFA Amsterdam.

The collaboration begins within the 22^nd edition of MADG, which will take place between 9-18 May 2025 in seven different Polish cities including the capital Warsaw and online on mdag.pl from May 20 to June 2. The festival will host a special night celebrating one century of FIPRESCI, during which the screening of David France’s Welcome to Chechnya will be presented by the FIPRESCI president Ahmed Shawky, followed by a Q&A session with the director.

Welcome to Chechnya won the FIPRESCI award in the 2020 Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival. The critics jury wrote this motivation of choosing the film:

“In these unprecedented times, socio-political activism is more essential than ever. As the lock-down has made it easier for the white, straight, male populists around the world to impose their extreme policies, Welcome to Chechnya by David France gives voice to the voiceless: women and the LGBTQ communities that are always the first to suffer when our freedoms of speech and expression are pushed to breaking point. And it does so by uncovering the little known, shocking truth and its cost, using deep fake techniques, like digital face alterations. How apt and effectively ironic.”

President of FIPRESCI, Ahmed Shawky, spoke about the collaboration saying: “We are proud to start this new step with one of the most successful documentary film festivals of the 21^st century. Millennium Docs Against Gravity represents the values of art, freedom, and sense of community, to which we are strongly committed in FIPRESCI. I believe this collaboration will develop into more activities in the coming years.”

Artistic Director of MDAG, Karol Piekarczyk, is thrilled about the upcoming collaboration: „We are absolutely filled with joy for this new collaboration between our festival and FIPRESCI. For us film criticism has been always of the utmost importance. It provides the film industry with the necessary analysis for it to grow. It nurtures discussions amongst the viewers which, in turn, enhances the way we perceive art. It also furnishes us, festival programmers, with tools essential for contemplating the medium. And those are the values that for a century have been upheld thanks to FIPRESCI. We have many plans for our collaboration and we cannot wait to share them with everybody during the upcoming editions of the festival”.

The screening of Welcome to Chechnya will take place on the evening of May 11^th at Atlantic cinema in Warsaw.

©FIPRESCI