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23rd Kinoteka Polish Film Festival Announces Full 2025 UK Programme

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1 month ago

Feb 6, 2025

This year’s twenty-third edition of the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival will bring another compelling line-up of contemporary and classic Polish cinema to London screens from 6 March to 25 April 2025. In addition, this year’s festival Opening Night Gala will also serve as the official inauguration of the UK/Poland Season 2025, organised by the British Council, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Cultural Institute in London. During the six-month-long season, between March and November, 100 multi-artform events in 20 cities will serve to promote British culture in Poland (coordinated by the British Council) and Polish culture in the UK (prepared by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Cultural Institute in London). Furthermore, for the first time, the festival will be venturing around the UK for the first time ever, working in collaboration with Klassiki, as it expands into eight cities for a tour that will highlight key titles from across the programme.

OPENING GALA

Kinoteka and the UK/Poland Season 2025 will open with a ceremonial screening of Under the Volcano (Pod wulkanem, 2024) at BFI Southbank on 6 March, followed by a discussion with the director. Damian Kocur’s observational second feature follows his award-winning Bread and Salt, which opened Kinoteka in 2023. Arriving at the festival following screenings at Toronto International Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival, the film speaks to the emotional heart of those impacted by war. Life can change in an instant, due to circumstances beyond our control, as this story from outside the conflict zone shows us. A Ukrainian family on holiday in Tenerife struggles to reconcile their new status as refugees, as a result of the Russian invasion. An exceptional performance from Sofiia Berezovska (awarded at Gdynia Film Festival) embodies that identity crisis of international politics colliding with teenage fun in the sun.

CLOSING GALA AND WOJCIECH HAS RETROSPECTIVE

Following on from past retrospectives on celebrated Polish directors such as Andrzej Wajda and Jerzy Skolimowski, Kinoteka will once again be honouring one of Poland’s greatest filmmakers with a season dedicated to Wojciech Has, in collaboration with BFI Southbank and the ICA. As part of this season, the festival’s Closing Gala on 25 April at the ICA will be a special screening of Has’ surrealist masterpiece The Hourglass Sanatorium (Sanatorium pod klepsydrą, 1973), an opulently strange and hallucinatory classic that filters Bruno Schulz’s elusive and elliptical novella (also recently adapted into Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by the Quay Brothers) through Has’s own familiar obsessions. Like most Has protagonists, Józef (Jan Nowicki) is trying to access the past, in this case by visiting his father (Marek Kondrat) in a sanatorium that turns out to be a portal to a world based as much on Józef’s fears and long-suppressed memories as it is on objective reality. The Closing Gala screening will be followed by a musical performance by the Bestet Quartet, playing an arrangement influenced by the film. The retrospective season, spanning 1 April – 25 April, will play Has’ entire filmography including titles such as his beguiling epic The Saragossa Manuscript (Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie, 1964), the director’s acclaimed debut The Noose (Pętla, 1957) and the influential wartime drama Farewells (Pożegnania, 1958). To complement the season, an exhibition of Has film posters will take place at both venues.

THE SANATORIUM UNDER THE SIGN OF THE HOURGLASS AND ‘DORMITORIUM’ EXHIBITION

Playing on the UK’s largest screen at BFI IMAX, audiences can experience the Quay Brothers’ immersive and dreamlike new feature film The Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (2024), a haunting new stop-motion adaptation of Bruno Schulz’s novella which provides a fascinating counterpoint to the Has version at this year’s festival. Told through both puppet animation and live-action, the film finds a ghostly train transporting a man to a sanatorium by the edge of a mythic forest to visit his dying father. The festival will also be bringing Dormitorium to London’s Swedenborg House in March, an exhibition of the Quay Brothers’ immaculately hand-crafted puppet film sets. Alongside the exhibition, two programmes of the remarkable short films highlighted in the exhibition will be shown a short walk away at Covent Garden’s Garden Cinema.

NEW POLISH CINEMA

Each year, the festival’s New Polish Cinema strand showcases the very best in current Polish cinema with a number of premieres that represent the country’s contemporary filmmaking talent. As part of this year’s strand, audiences will have the opportunity to see Under the Grey Sky (Pod szarym niebem, 2024), the outstanding feature debut from former journalist Mara Tamkovich which won first feature prize at Gdynia Film Festival 2024. Inspired by the true story of reporter Katsiaryna Andreyeva, who was arrested in Belarus after covering peaceful protests following the 2020 elections, the film blends archive footage alongside strong lead performances to show the dilemmas faced in both personal and professional spheres as journalist Lena (Aliaksandra Vaitsekhovich) and her husband Ilya (Valentin Novopolskij) strive to make moral choices and survive with dignity. Set in the late 1930s in a Europe on the brink of war, White Courage (Biała odwaga, 2024) is a historical drama that has courted some controversy on release in Poland. Drawing on detailed research, the film tells the story of a Highlander family torn apart by collaboration during the rise of Nazi Germany. A box office success in Poland last year, it is set in the beautiful Tatra Mountains and is directed by award-winning cinematographer Marcin Koszalka. Also taking place in WWII is Irena’s Vow (2023), the remarkable true story of Irena Gut Opdyke, the housekeeper of a Nazi officer who risked her life to save twelve Jewish workers when she discovered the nearby Tarnopol Ghetto was to be liquidated. Using her wit and courage Irena was able to conceal her friends in the basement of her employer’s house until the end of the German occupation. Adrian Panek’s engaging dramatised biography Simona Kossak (2024), tells the story of pioneering biologist Simona Kossak’s (1943-2007) formative years, on her journey from family misfit to ecological activist. Sandra Drzymalska (EO, White Courage) stars as Kossak alongside Jakub Gierszał (Doppelganger, Ultima Thule) in a film that exposes issues around the position of women in science and our need to take care of the planet. It Is Not My Film (To nie mój film, 2024) is the distinctive debut feature of Maria Zbąska. Wanda (newcomer Zofia Chabiera) and Janek (Marcin Sztabiński) have reached breaking point in their relationship, so in a final attempt to reconcile their future they embark on a 400 km walk along the wintery Baltic coast. A ‘road’ movie that challenges us to consider what risks we might take to safeguard something we value, this is a comedy for the twenty-first century with a serious message. From Jan P. Matuszyński, the director of Leave No Traces, Minghun (2024), is a beautifully-poised film shot by award winning cinematographer Kacper Fertacz that explores the complexity of family ties and social behaviours. When Jurek (Marcin Dorociński, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning) and his father in law are forced to face personal tragedy together their emotional journey is challenged by cultural misunderstanding as they agree to perform the Chinese ritual of minghun (a post-mortem wedding), which begins a series of unexpected encounters.

DOCUMENTARY

Continuing its dedication to showing thought-provoking documentary film, Kinoteka will be screening Agnieszka Zwiefka’s Silent Trees (Drzewa milczą, 2024). Picking up on issues explored in Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border, this observational documentary focuses on a Kurdish family caught in a forest between Belarus and Poland who become a geopolitical pawn. Zwiefka’s vitally important and hard-hitting film arrives in the UK after playing festivals across the world including premiering at prestigious documentary festival CPH DOX. Also showing is Wanda Rutkiewicz: The Last Expedition (Wanda Rutkiewicz: Ostatnia wyprawa, 2024), as filmmaker Eliza Kubarska (The Wall of Shadows) returns to the mountains for this award-winning exploration of the life and disappearance of mountaineering icon Wanda Rutkiewicz. The first European woman and the first Pole to climb Everest, Rutkiewicz’s independent spirit drew antagonism and dissent from the media and set her apart from the largely male climbing community. Using previously unseen extensive archives alongside interviews, this film explores the price she paid for success, as she vanished in the Himalayas in 1992 and her body was never recovered. Rounding out the documentary strand is Such Feeling (To uczucie, 2024), a poetic documentary that follows a group of queer friends in Warsaw through their performances, protests, and moments of deep intimacy, amid social transformation. This first feature-length film by artist and choreographer Alex Baczyński-Jenkins is a mesmerizingly genuine film about everyday queer life, love and resistance in Poland, made with and about friends.

KINOTEKA ON TOUR – IN PARTNERSHIP WITH KLASSIKI

For the first time, in 2025, Kinoteka will be partnering with Klassiki, the video video-on-demand platform dedicated to showcasing the rich cinematic traditions of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and embarking on a tour where a selection of films from across the London programme will be screening at venues in Birmingham, Hull, Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford and Sheffield. Films playing on the tour are Under the Volcano, Under the Grey Sky, It Is Not My Film, Silent Trees and Wojciech Has features The Saragossa Manuscript and Farewells.

POLISH CINEMA CLASSICS – THE HOLOCAUST ON FILM

Kinoteka will be showing two Polish films on the Holocaust that provide insight into how Nazi terror was depicted both in the immediate post-war period and during the Polish People’s Republic. The first feature film to be made about the Holocaust, and shot in Auschwitz-Birkenau barely two years after liberation, Wanda Jakubowska‘s harrowing The Last Stage (Ostatni etap, 1948) focuses on the women prisoners of Auschwitz. Jakubowska’s film not only documents the horrors of the camp, but defined and inspired all future cinematic representations of the Holocaust – as well as being a rallying call for her political beliefs and a celebration of women’s courage in the face of unspeakable barbarity. Also screening is Passenger (Pasażerka, 1968), which is based on Auschwitz survivor Zofia Posmysz’s 1962 novel and was also shot at the former camp. The film was a labour of love for its director Andrzej Munk who tragically died in a car crash before completing it. His colleagues, convinced this film was a masterwork, pieced together his vision using the material he had already shot, still photographs and voice-over.

FAMILIAR STRANGERS: HOLLYWOOD AND BRITISH CINEMA IN POLISH POSTER ART

Step into a world where Hollywood classics are transformed through the bold, imaginative lens of the artists from the Polish Poster School. This exhibition unveils how Polish artists reinterpreted American and UK films such as The Shining and The Return of the Jedi while navigating the harsh realities of Communist and post-Soviet Poland at a time when censorship, propaganda and surveillance were omnipresent. Blending raw intensity with haunting beauty, these posters reflect the psychological landscape of a society shaped by repression. Experience this powerful collection of film posters outdoors at King’s Cross’ Coal Drops Yard, which is free-of-charge and taking place from early March until 21 April.

UNDYING SOUNDS: REINVENTING KOMEDA

An immersive experience at the crossroads of film, jazz, electronic music and audiovisual art taking place at the Southbank Centre, UnDying Sounds: Reinventing Komeda celebrates the enduring legacy of Krzysztof Komeda, a pioneer of Polish jazz and one of the most influential composers in European cinema, known for his scores for Rosemary’s Baby and The Fearless Vampire Killers. This innovative audiovisual experience reimagines the essence of Komeda’s work, bringing his visionary music to life through a modern lens. At the heart of the project are iconic scenes from films scored by Komeda, masterfully re-envisioned by Kajetan Szostok, an award-winning visual artist known for his innovative storytelling through AI-enhanced imagery.

FILM AND FASHION – ‘A’ FOR ANTKOWIAK

Over the forty years of its operation, Moda Polska, Poland’s most celebrated postwar fashion house, gathered around itself many outstanding creators and a large group of models before its untimely demise in the late 90s. In 1998, Jerzy Antkowiak bought the collections of the fashion house and years later, during the celebration of his eightieth birthday, exhibited the collections to his guests. It was then that the idea of creating the documentary film ‘A’ For Antkowiak was born, a film that tells the story of a fashion designer working under the difficult reality of the Polish People’s Republic and the “Modapolska” work that has stood the test of time. Following the screening there will be a Panel Discussion and Q&A with Jerzy Antkowiak and producer of the Film Tomasz Ossoliński.

FAMILY SCREENING – THE JAZZ AND ANIMATION JAM

This film matinée is a special event for the festival’s younger audience members. Cine Lumiere will be hosting a screening of iconic Polish, French and British cartoons accompanied by live music played by prominent jazz musicians from Wrocław. The musical themes will be on various topics, combining film plots with exciting musical tales that introduce young viewers to the world of jazz. Films screening as part of the event include Bolek and Lolek: Holiday Trails (1978), Reksio’s Autumn (1979), Colargol and Foo Foo: The Stowaway (1960).