Kraków Film Festival and the Polish Documentary Film Directors Guild announced May 19 To the West in Zapata, directed by David Bim, as the winner of the inaugural Marcel Łoziński International Documentary Award.
The award celebrates creative ambition in documentary cinema – “filmmaking that is bold, honest, resistant to convention, and committed to expanding the artistic boundaries of non-fiction film,” the organisations jointly say. “It bears the name of Marcel Łoziński, one of Poland’s most distinguished documentary auteurs, whose body of work has left a profound mark on both Polish and international non-fiction cinema.”
The distinction is intended to honour his legacy and to demonstrate that “a genuinely creative approach to cinematic language continues to find successors across the world.”
The winner was selected by a jury comprising María Campaña Ramia, curator and programmer for festivals including IDFA; Sergei Loznitsa, one of the most significant contemporary directors working in both documentary and fiction; and leading Polish director Paweł Łoziński, son of the award’s patron.
In their statement, the jury wrote: “We have chosen to honour a film whose rawness and truth have stayed with us long after the screening. It is a remarkable documentary – one that unites beautiful, painterly imagery and precise dramatic construction with genuine emotional force. With remarkably restrained means, and never transgressing the boundaries of his protagonists’ intimacy, the young director speaks about the matters that give meaning to our lives – love, family and work. We are certain that Marcel, as we remember him, would have agreed with our decision.”
The winning film, sold by Square Eyes, transports viewers to the swamplands of the Zapata Peninsula, where its protagonist hunts alligators alone, cut off from his family and in unrelenting confrontation with nature. We follow his preparations, his hard work, and his journey home with mounting tension. David Bim’s austere black-and-white debut emerges as a meditation on labour, responsibility, and the kind of love that enables people to surpass their own limits.
The other nominated films were My Stolen Planet by Farahnaz Sharifi and Remake by Ross McElwee.
My Stolen Planet is a personal diary by an Iranian filmmaker born during the Islamic Revolution, who weaves together private recordings, archival material, and her own lived experience to construct a film about memory, freedom, oppression, and the struggle against erasure – rendered all the more urgent in the wake of the Women, Life, Freedom movement.
Remake, meanwhile, is Ross McElwee’s intimate reflection on the passage of time, grief, and the relationship between a father and his son, created from footage the two have accumulated over many years. All three documentaries will be screened during the KFF festival.
The nominees list was finalised following recommendations from numerous prominent figures from the world of documentary cinema – filmmakers, curators, and programmers from Poland, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Denmark, and the United States.
The 66th Krakow Film Festival will be held in cinemas from 31 May to 7 June 2026 and online on KFF VOD from 5 June to 19 June 2026. It is on the exclusive list of film events qualifying for the Academy Awards® in short film categories (fiction, animation, documentary) and feature-length documentary, and the European Film Awards in the same categories. It also serves as a qualifying event for the BAFTA Awards.
