The main part of the Clermont-Ferrand festival’s program has been announced. In the international competition, the audience and jurors will see Slow Light by the Kijek/Adamski duo and Jan Bujnowski’s fiction film The Devil.

The Clermont-Ferrand festival has been held in high regard by the film community for many years. Its selectors pick the best short films for the competitions, invite numerous guests, and hold interesting meetings. This year's 35th edition will take place between 27 January and 4 February 2023 and – as usual – impresses with its rich program.

A total of 78 titles from 60 countries will be competing for the main prize of the French festival's international contest. Animated shorts, documentaries, and fiction films, and two Polish films among them – Slow Light by the Kijek/Adamski duo and The Devil by Jan Bujnowski.

The duo's film is about a man who only sees everything he looks at after seven years because his eyes are so slow to let the light through. A delayed view of events causes the protagonist's emotional immaturity and failures in life. Using a mixed animation technique, the film combines two timelines in a poster-like fashion and utilises visual tells to convey the protagonist's story.

In turn, the fiction film is set in the 1990s when surveys on the religiousness of Poles conducted by the OBOP polling centre have always shown the percentage of believers at around 95%. At the same time, the unemployment rate was also reaching record highs. The crisis reinforced the society's need for spirituality, which allowed things to happen that would not necessarily have been possible in any other era…

A list of all qualified films can be found here.

DECEMBER 2022