3 Polish films won awards at the European Film Academy Awards 2017

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Every year, the various activities of the European Film Academy culminate in the ceremony of the European Film Awards which are presented jointly with EFA Productions gGmbH. In a total of 22 categories, among them European Film, European Director, European Actress and European Actor, the European Film Awards annually honour the greatest achievements in European cinema.

The 30th European Film Awards returned to the German capital, home of the European Film Academy, on 9 December.The nominations and winners were selected by more than 2,500 members of the European Film Academy.

Three Polish films have been awarded this year:

Best Costume Designer

Katarzyna Lewińska – Spoor (Pokot)

The Polish-language title, Pokot, is a hunting term that refers to the count of wild animals killed. The English title Spoor refers to the traces and tracks left behind by the hunted game. The film is adapted from a novel “Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych” (“Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead”) by the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk.

The film is set in a remote mountainous region of the Kłodzko Valley in south-western Poland, where an elderly woman, Janina Duszejko, turns witness to a violent and mysterious death of several hunters. She is convinced she knows who the murderer is, but nobody believes her story.

Best Animated Feature Film

Loving Vincent (Twój Vincent) – Directors: Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman

Loving Vincent is a 2017 biographical animated drama film about the life of painter Vincent van Gogh, and in particular, the circumstances of his death. It is the first fully painted animated feature film. It is written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman. The development was funded by the Polish Film Institute, and partially through a Kickstarter campaign.

Each of the film’s 65,000 frames is an oil painting on canvas, using the same technique as Van Gogh, created by a team of 115 painters.

Best Documentary

Communion (Komunia) – Director: Anna Zamecka – Producers: Anna Wydra, Anna Zamecka, Zuzanna Krol, Izabela Lopuch, Hanka Kastelicova

First-time Polish director Anna Zamecka watched many films in preparation for shooting her début feature, Komunia / Communion. Inspired by many works of both fiction and nonfiction, one in particular had an emotional impact. Nagisa Oshima’s Boy (Shonen) from 1969 is based on real events reported in Japanese newspapers at the time about Toshio Omura, a boy forced by a conniving father to participate in dangerous scams in order for him to stay with the family.

While Zamecka’s young protagonist, Ola — a 12-year-old living with Marek, her alcoholic father, and Nikodem, her autistic brother, in a cramped and crumbling-down apartment in a town an hour’s drive from Warsaw — doesn’t experience anything quite so severe, she is explicitly tasked with holding her small family and its household together. There is also a wayward mother in the mix. For better or worse, Ola is the head of the household, and while not always graceful under pressure, she delivers an exquisite and highly nuanced performance.

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