KFF 2025

When journalist Lina Vdovîi, estranged from her violent father, agrees to help him expose the injustices perpetrated by previous employer, the process reopens the wounds of their past relationship. Nevertheless the experience also proves to be cathartic. Making the film convinced her that “running away” from him wasn’t “healing the wounds from your past,” she tells BDE. She was, instead, giving herself a chance to make peace with him.

Directors Mocanu and Dragolea follow charismatic environmental activist Tiberiu Boșutar as he tries to stop illegal (and highly lucrative) logging in Romania’s forests. “Our way of dealing with issues [in Romania] is a tragic-comical way,” says Dragolea. “We have a saying that you laugh and you cry…we didn’t search for the humour but the humour was just there for us to uncover with our camera.”

The doc component of KFF Industry kicks off in earnest May 28 with the presentation of nine Polish ‘Docs to Go,’ These are films on the cusp of completion and roll-out to the international doc community. May 29 will see the presentation of 14 new doc projects, while the CEDOC market embraces docs from the wider CEE region. Industry Head Katarzyna Wilk fills in BDE on this year’s KFF professional sidebar.

Polish Mariusz Biernacki’s feature doc debut The Herd takes on the thorny issue of what it means to be a man in the 21st Century. “Unlike women, who have had clear directions for change through feminist movements and numerous support networks, men today frequently lack guidance,’ the director tells BDE. “Many feel lost, and this has contributed to the rise of phenomena such as incel communities and broader issues of male isolation and frustration.”

Ukrainian Sergiusz Bażenov’s feature project tells a story that should never have had to be told. It tells of a filmmaker who becomes a military paramedic in a team with a Dutch volunteer. Together, they witness how war changes people — and themselves. “I’m aiming for a more universal message about war itself, and how it transforms people,” the director tells BDE. “I was certainly transformed by it, and I believe that in today’s world, no one is truly safe, that war can reach anyone. That’s why I want the viewer to imagine themselves in our place. To feel that every death, however distant, diminishes us all.”

On the eve of the 65th Krakow Film Festival (25 May to 1 June), outgoing director Krzysztof Gierat and Krakow Film Foundation president Barbara Orlicz-Szczypuła sat down with Business Doc Europe to preview this year’s event and to reflect on Gierat’s 25 years at the helm. “Documentary filmmaking has changed radically, so much so that my own perception of it has changed,” he tells BDE of the ever-evolving doc sector.

Actor/director/producer Dawid Szurmiej presented his doc project that tells the story of the eponymous Polish luminary, the only actress from behind the Iron Curtain to be nominated for an Academy Award, but who was forced into exile at the height of her career as anti-semitic riots swept across Eastern Europe in 1968. “Ida Kaminska went from being the cornerstone of Yiddish culture before the war, to becoming the bridge of a lost culture of 300,000 Jews of Warsaw and the 3 million Jews of Poland,” Szurmiej said of her legacy.

In Krakow, debutant Zofia Sawicka pitched her intriguing doc project, which is set on a train progressing through the wilderness. The further the train goes, the more diverse becomes the mosaic of personal stories that shed light on the human condition. “For me, personally, this project is a love poem about power and the beauty of being a human, and this magical feeling of connections and encounters inside the train,” said Sawicka.

Weronika Mliczewska’s Child of Dust won the Golden Horn in International Competition and shared the Golden Hobby-Horse in National Competition (with Wojciech Staroń for The Passion of Agnieszka). Natalia Koniarz’s Silver meanwhile won a Silver Horn for artistic merit, the FIPRESCI prize, the Audience prize, and the Maciej Szumowski Award for social awareness, while its Maciej Kubicki received the award for Best Producer of a Polish documentary. All winners…

Maestra tells the story of the legendary Lidia Grychtołówna who, at the age of 96, remains the world’s oldest active concert pianist. But now she is preparing for her final concert. “What begins as the story of a quiet, nearly forgotten woman becomes a powerful portrait of a radiant artist reclaiming her place in the spotlight,” says producer Iwona Harris. “Her transformation into the vibrant, commanding maestra is the emotional core of the film.”