It’s a bumper year for the Polish doc industry with no fewer than eight productions and co-productions featured across International Competition, Frontlight, Luminous, Signed, Best of Fests, Dead Angle and IDFA DocLab. Additionally, the November 16 Polish Docs Pro Showcase will feature five of the most inventive and interesting Polish creative documentary projects in progress.
Elwira Niewiera’s Women and War will compete for the IDFA Award for Best Film in the International Competition, and will have its world premiere November 15 in Amsterdam. The documentary explores the long-term consequences of war through the experiences of Ukrainian women who have survived war crimes and are attempting to regain a sense of safety and rebuild their lives.
Mateusz Mularski’s Notes From a Besieged City has been selected for the non-competitive Frontlight section, which presents documentaries addressing some of the most urgent issues facing the world today. Filmed over three years, the documentary observes the daily lives of people in Kherson, a city that was liberated in November 2022 after almost nine months of Russian occupation but remains under constant shelling. The film had its world premiere at the Krakow Film Festival, where it screened in Polish Competition. Joanna Zielińska of Big Wave Films received the award for Best Producer of Polish Documentary and Short Films. The film will have its international premiere in Amsterdam.
Krzysztof Tomaszewski’s short documentary Mentor has been selected for the Luminous section. Its protagonist is a mysterious young boxer training in Warsaw’s Praga district. His fellow club members try to work out who he really is, constructing their own versions of his life until their assumptions eventually collide with reality.
Michał Stankiewicz’s Being in You will be presented as part of IDFA DocLab. The mixed-reality documentary was created with American singer and geologist Cat Janice, both during her lifetime and through the recordings, voice, music and other materials she left behind. The project reverses the conventional logic of immersive experiences. Rather than inviting the viewer to enter its protagonist’s world, it asks whether her digital trace can enter the world of the living through their senses, imagination and physical movement. Earlier this year, the project was selected for the main Venice Immersive competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.
Elsewhere, Best of Fests will feature Klaudia Szott’s 24-minute documentary MIX, whose protagonist is Sylwia Achu, the daughter of a Polish mother and a Nigerian father, who searches for traces of her own identity in the archives of the Łódź Film School. Films made during the Cold War by students from the Global South become the starting point for a personal story composed of archival images and the protagonist’s memories.
Two more titles have been selected for Signed, a section showcasing new films by directors with distinctive authorial voices. One of them is Andrei Kutsila’s Letters from the Silenced Country, a portrait of contemporary Belarus told through the experiences of people affected by imprisonment, repression and exile. The film recently won the Golden Dove for Best Feature-Length Film (International Competition Documentary Film) at DOK Leipzig.
The Signed section will also feature Michał Marczak’s Closure (Sundance 2026), which follows Daniel, whose sixteen-year-old son Krzysztof disappears without a trace after being captured by a surveillance camera on a bridge over the Vistula River. His father embarks on a months-long search, while Marczak focuses not on solving the mystery of the disappearance, but on a family living in a state of uncertainty, suspended between hope and fear.
Paweł Łoziński’s classic The Balcony Movie will also return to Amsterdam, this time as part of the special programme Dead Angle: Common Ground, devoted to different forms of community, solidarity and encounters in public space. From the balcony of his apartment, the director points his camera at a Warsaw sidewalk and strikes up conversations with passers-by, turning a series of chance encounters into a polyphonic portrait of contemporary society.
Polish documentaries at IDFA Industry
“Attending IDFA Industry is always extremely important for Polish producers, as it is often the first step towards gaining visibility for a project on a broad international market,” comments Katarzyna Wilk, Head of KFF Sales and Deputy Director of Festivals/Polish Docs. “It is also significant that in Amsterdam one can meet many professionals from outside Europe, which opens up far more opportunities.”
On November 16 (17.00) the Polish Docs Pro Showcase will feature a selection of the most interesting Polish creative documentary projects in progress, followed by one-on-one meetings with the decision makers. These are:
- TransMothers, dir. Maria Wider, prod. Marta Dużbabel / Pinot Films
- Homeleaving, dir. Kamil Dobrosielski, prod. Aleksandra Konieczna, Bartosz Bretes / BeHonest
- The Escape, dir. Yevgenia Danylenko, prod. Maria Blicharska / Blick Production International, Olena Yershova / Tatofilm, Boris Despodov / Kinokombinat
- The Curse, dir. Jakub Jakubik, prod. Piotr Śmiechowski / Telemark
- Her Name is Fields, dir. Martyna Wróbel, prod. Magda Sztorc, Anna Zajączkowska, Anna Adamiak / Mozaika Films
At the Docs For Sale Market video library, industry guests will have chance to watch all of the Polish films selected for IDFA official programme, plus others such as Candidates of Death by Maciej Cuske and Death in the Making by Piotr Pawlus.
Polish films and projects at IDFA will be further celebrated during the Guest Meet Guest networking event hosted by Polish Docs and Wajda Film Centre on Sunday November 16 at 18.30. The event is open for all accredited guests.
