A program that will present the best of Polish cinema to Israeli audiences will be launched on October 15 on the HOT television network and will last for about a month.
The project is a collaboration among HOT, the Polish Institute in Tel Aviv and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Poland.
The Polish cinema program will feature eight acclaimed contemporary Polish films that will be broadcast simultaneously on the HOT VOD film channels.
These films include Marcin Wrona’s Demon (2015), a Polish-Israeli co-production that retells the dybbuk legend. It stars Itay Tiran as a young British man who shows up in a Polish village to get married. Before the wedding, he finds bones buried that are a disturbing reminder of the Holocaust, and this discovery transforms the wedding ceremony into something horrific.
Wrona committed suicide shortly before he was supposed to come to Haifa for the film’s premiere.
Agnieszka Holland and Kasia Adamik’s Spoor is based on a story by Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk and tells a haunting story about an older woman who lives by her own rules, set in a rural area, that foregrounds animal rights. It’s a suspenseful tale that also weaves in the theme of domestic abuse.
The two directors, who are mother and daughter, shared the Silver Bear Prize at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival.
Tomasz Wasilewski’s United States of Love looks at the stories of four very different women during 1990, the first year after the Berlin Wall was taken down, and shows the complexities of the apparent freedom they now have and the difficulties they still face. It also won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Agnieszka Smoczynska’s The Lure, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, mixes genres as it tells the story of mermaid sisters who come out of the water and into a nightclub. One looks for love from a human being, while the other has a taste for human flesh.
Katarzyna Dzierzawska, director of the Polish Institute in Tel Aviv, said: “It is precisely on such days, when projects are halted and the local and world cultural world is in crisis, that we are proud to present such a project which is an important international collaboration. It is a project that provides a platform for original creations, for the connection between countries that have had a bond for years.” The event is a continuation of Polish Zoom, which was launched last year in cinemas around the country and is moving online this year, due to the virus.
For more information about the films and screenings, go to the Polish Institute website at https://instytutpolski.pl/telaviv