The Krakow Film Festival and Polish Documentary Film Directors Guild announced February 25 the launch of the Marcel Łoziński Documentary Award, valued at €7,000, to acknowledge documentary films that expand the artistic boundaries of the medium. The winner will be announced during the Krakow Film Festival (May 31 to June 7 2026).
“Neither the film’s length, nor the director’s country of origin, nor whether they are an established figure or a newcomer bears any relevance,” the festival writes. “What matters is creative courage and a distinctive cinematic language. These were the hallmarks of Marcel Łoziński’s work throughout his entire life.”
“In a world dominated by algorithms and ready-made formats, the prize recognises films that defy convention, steadfast in their honesty and creative vision.”
The aim of the award is not only to commemorate one of Poland’s greatest documentary filmmakers but also “to affirm that his inventive approach to cinematic language lives on and continues to find successors around the world.”
KFF director Barbara Orlicz-Szczypuła comments: “Marcel Łoziński was truly special to us – a director, a mentor, a friend. Almost every year he would come to Kraków to present his films, but also to engage in conversation about what documentary cinema is and what it can become. Those conversations were invaluable and live in us forever. Establishing this award is a tribute to him, to his body of work, and serves as an encouragement to other filmmakers to push beyond the boundaries of documentary storytelling.”
Kamila Dorbach, Director of the Polish Film Institute, adds: “The establishment of the Marcel Łoziński Documentary Award sends an important signal that documentary cinema remains a space of creative freedom and artistic courage. The Polish Film Institute is proud to support an initiative that commemorates an outstanding filmmaker and aims to inspire future generations of filmmakers to seek their own language and venture beyond the boundaries of cinematic storytelling.”
The award is funded by the Polish Film Institute, whose involvement provides the prize with “a lasting institutional foundation and a guarantee that it is going be awarded annually, establishing it as a permanent fixture on the map of global documentary cinema.”
Leading Polish Filmmaker Paweł Łoziński, Marcel’s son and member of the jury, comments: “I am deeply grateful to the Krakow Film Festival for the idea of an award named after Marcel Łoziński. You were his favourite and most important festival; he remained loyal to you from the early 1970s right up until the very end. Dad couldn’t stand pomp and ceremony, but he was rather fond of receiving awards. He also enjoyed awarding prizes to documentaries he had fallen in love with. He had a soft spot for films that were bold, universal, uncompromising, and made with ingenuity. Films that treated people with respect – that was what mattered to him most. I hope his award will be just like that – given with a certain cool and without pretension to films that are beautiful in form and courageous in substance.”
Films will enter the competition after being recommended by leading experts within the documentary sector, whether artists or programmers. Nominations have been submitted by: Marcin Borchardt (Poland), documentary filmmaker; Sergio Fant (Italy), curator and programmer at Trento Film Festival, Visions du Réel and the Berlinale; Emilie Bujès(Switzerland), artistic director of Visions du Réel; Marek Hovorka (Czech Republic), founder and director of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival; Amir Labaki (Brazil), director of the It’s All True festival in São Paulo; Katrine Kilgaard (Denmark), managing director of CPH:DOX; Tomasz Wolski (Poland), documentary filmmaker; Anita Piotrowska and Barbara Orlicz-Szczypuła (Poland), directors of the Krakow Film Festival; and Debra Zimmerman(USA), executive director of Women Make Movies.
This year’s jury will comprise: María Campaña Ramia – festival curator and programmer; Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa; and Paweł Łoziński.
Marcel Łoziński
A graduate of the Faculty of Communications at the Warsaw University of Technology and the Directing Department at the Łódź Film School, Marcel Łoziński (1940–2025) began his career as a sound engineer at the Documentary Film Studio. In the 1970s and 80s, he collaborated with the Polish Television and Andrzej Wajda’s Film Unit X. In his films, he combined observation with elements of staging and artistic provocation, seeking tools to reveal truths about people and the mechanisms of reality – both the specific realities of communist-era Poland and the universal human condition.
He received an Academy Award nomination for 89mm From Europe (1994), was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a lecturer at the Wajda School. A recipient of numerous prestigious national and international awards, he was decorated with the Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture. He maintained a lifelong association with the Krakow Film Festival – as a multiple award winner, a long-standing member of the Programme Board of the Krakow Film Foundation, and the recipient of the festival’s highest honour, the Dragon of Dragons Award, bestowed upon him in 2016 for his lifetime achievement and contribution to the development of world documentary cinema.
The 66th Krakow Film Festival will be held in cinemas from 31 May to 7 June 2027 and online on KFF VOD from 5 June to 19 June 2026.
