WEEKEND AWARDS FOR POLES

Last weekend brought more awards and honors for Polish short film makers . Polish cinema was recognized mainly in Greece, as well as in Romania, where a Polish film won the Grand Prix of the festival.

The first to be awarded last weekend was Marcin Filipowicz, whose school etude "Echo" has been invited to the 3rd edition of the Romanian Ploiesti Film Festival . On Saturday, the film received the Grand Prix of the international competition. Even though "Echo" has been awarded this summer at T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival, it has not yet received any awards abroad – the Romanian award is the first statuette for the film . This year's festival programme also included two other films, which just like " Echo" were produced by the Faculty of Radio and Television at the University of Silesia in Katowice, that is "All Souls' Day"  by Aleksandra Terpińska and "Our Bad Winter" by Grzegorz Zariczny . In addition, two films made by students from Lodz Film School were shown in the competition, "The Heat" directed by Bartosz Kruhlik and "The Single" by Karol Starnawski. The Ploiesti Film Festival was held between 27 and 28 September.

The second festival, which ended last weekend and brought the Poles an extraordinary number of awards, was the Greek Naoussa IFF. This year, eight Polish films fought for the festival’s honors, including "Miruna" by Piotr Sułkowski, "Wolf’s Clothing" by Olga Kałagate and "Ring" by Maciej Cendrowski. The competition was tough, as there were 213 films from 50 countries screened at the festival . As many as five Polish films have received awards during the jubilee 10th edition of the Naoussa Festival. The audience honored Kamil Jaworek and his film "The Fairytale Cookery Chronicle" with the award for the Best Film in 3D and Tomek Popakul’s “Ziegenort” received a Special Mention from the jury. Poles dominated the awards in the South East Europe Talents , in which students and young newcomers’ videos from South-Eastern Europe were evaluated. Two major awards went to students of the Faculty of Radio and Television at the University of Silesia, Aleksandra Terpińska has received the Best SEE Talents Film award for her film “All Souls’ Day” and Grzegorz Zariczny and his "Our bad winter" received the second prize in the same category. The third statuette went to Filip Gieldon, a student at the Film School in Łódź, for his fiction film "The Kiss ". Gieldon’s work has been awarded ex aequo with the Israeli film "The Return" (dir. Say Levi ) . The festival was held between 25 and 29 September . Films in the international competitions were evaluated by four jury teams.

To read more about the festival, visit the official websites of Ploiesti and Naoussa