POLES AWARDED AT THE BALKANIMA FESTIVAL

On Saturday, 11 October, the 11th edition of the Serbian Animated Film Festival Balkanima came to an end. The jury awarded Polish films three times.

The festival jury decided to give the festival’s Grand Prix award to “Baths” by Tomek Ducki. It is already the second Grand Prix for “Baths” - in August, the film was given the main award of the Anibar Animation Festival in Kosovo. It is eleventh award for the latest animation by Ducki. The animation was produced by the Warsaw-based Studio Miniatur Filmowych and the British Peek and Boo.

The jury gave also five special awards to films, which stood out from among the 39 films presented in the international competition. One of them went to German-Polish co-production “Darling” by Izabela Plucińska. The latest clay animation by Plucińska is a captivating picture of the feeling of being lost and alienated and an attempt at putting the pieces that fail to fit together into a whole. “Darling” was produced by Clay Traces and Hauptproductions Film.

In addition to the award-winners - “Darling” and “Baths” - the latest film by Piotr Dumała - “Hippos" screened in the same competition.

This year’s student film line up, which accompanied the main competition, included 46 films. Special awards went to the best six of them. Among the award-winners, the jury chose to award the latest film by Paweł Prewencki, “Beach”. The student film by Prewencki, who is the graduate of the University of Arts in Poznań, was made in co-production with Mansarda Studio and Fifne studio, which is run by Paweł Prewencki.

It is worth adding that also five other animations screened as a part of a very same competition – the animation films made by the students of Lodz Film School: Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi - “Ab ovo”, Katarzyna Melnyk (“Of A Forest”), Karolina Specht (“An Incredibly Elastic Man”), and Zofia Dąbrowska (“The Sea”), as well as the graduate of the University of Arts in Poznań - Miłosz Margański (“Ars moriendi”).

The promotion of the three films abroad is supported by the Krakow Film Foundation.

You can read more about the festival on its website