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Poland’s American Film Festival is continuing to bet on U.S. independent films, ignoring the Hollywood blockbusters and bigger budget auteur films from the mini-majors.

“The fest selects a very precise type of project – they are real independent films, not in that Independent Spirit Award, less-than-$40 million sense,” says director and producer Rob Rice.

“The people that come with them have a kind of shorthand with each other. We are all up against the same things and we are all trying to trick the industry into mistaking our films for ‘real movies.’”

“There are always lots of interesting things happening in American independent cinema. It’s enough to mention three alumni of [fest’s industry sidebar] U.S. in Progress: Anu Valia (“We Strangers”), India Donaldson (“Good One”) and Sarah Friedland. These are great examples of new female voices speaking about female experiences, and keeping things intimate and personal,” says artistic director Ula Śniegowska.

Lucy Kerr’s vivisection of suburban naïveté, Family Portrait, opens with what could be a television advertisement for heart medication. Somewhere in Texas, late summer or early fall, a family meanders in a languid long take down to the riverbank to have their photograph taken for a Christmas card—three generations dressed in clean, bright clothes, flashing each other adoring smiles, the children weaving around the adults.

Except that this vision of togetherness, belonging, normality, comfort, is rendered unreal by the muted soundtrack, muddying the family’s dialogue past the point of intelligibility. As they all crowd into the frame, the adults corralling the children and forcing them into incongruous Santa hats, their voices become more distinct, and the scene abruptly cuts off. Not with the expected freeze frame of a camera flash, but before the family has struck a pose.

The rest of Family Portrait takes place at the...

One of the most acclaimed debuts at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival was writer/director Lucy Kerr’s debut “Family Portrait,” a disquieting drama about a family gathering where the matriarch goes missing. Kerr won the Boccalino d’Oro for Best Director at the Swiss festival. Now, Brooklyn-based indie distribution outfit Factory 25 has acquired worldwide rights to the film, with a theatrical run set to begin at New York City’s Metrograph on June 28. Further engagements and a digital release to follow. Watch the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.

Set at the dawn of Covid, “Family Portrait” follows Katy as she searches for the mother who can’t be found, the film weaving from one member of the family to another. The idyllic summer day setting descends into a more surreal environment as everyone starts to lose their sense of time and place. Kerr uses intimate Steadicam cinematography to blur...

Not long ago, an award-winning Polish composer who’d scored dozens of films approached Ula Śniegowska about U.S. in Progress, an industry event conceived as a bridge between the Polish and American markets that runs parallel to the American Film Festival in Wrocław, Poland.

“He approached me saying, ‘I’ve done enough in the Polish market. I need an introduction to the international market. Can you, as U.S. in Progress, help me?’” Śniegowska recalls. “It seems we are a perfect matchmaker for those types of companies to have their work exposed in the U.S.”

Celebrating its 13th edition, U.S. in Progress was launched as a showcase for emerging independent American filmmakers. Each year, the event presents a curated selection of American indie titles in the final stages of production to European sales agents, distributors and festival programmers. This year’s edition takes place Nov. 8 – 10.

Since its inception,...

Just two days before Sundance Film Festival will unveil its lineup, the other major January Utah festival has released theirs. Now in its 29th iteration, next year’s Slamdance Film Festival––which will also be providing programming both in-person and online, from January 20th through 29th––has unveiled its features slate. The lineup for the festival, which opens with Moby’s Punk Rock Vegan Movie, was culled from 7,600 total submissions, 1,522 of which were features. All films selected in the Narrative Features and Documentary Features competition categories are directorial debuts without U.S. distribution, with budgets of less than 1 million Usd.

“From the streets of Seattle to the psychedelic skies of a unicorn-run dystopia, our filmmakers are transporting audiences to new dimensions with stories that explore the nuance of disability, immigration and gender. This year’s lineup represents a generation of new directors who are breaking boundaries and redefining what filmmaking...

Slamdance has announced its feature lineup and “Free LSD” as the closing night film for the 29th Slamdance Film Festival

This year’s lineup was chosen from 7,600 submissions — 1, 522 of which were features — and represents projects from 13 different countries. The selections for the Narrative Features and Documentary Features competition categories are directorial debuts without U.S. distribution, with budgets of less than 1 million.

In addition to Slamdance’s opening night film Moby’s “Punk Rock Vegan Movie,” the festival will also showcase two additional Spotlight Feature screenings: “Downwind” and “Free LSD,” which follows one man’s inter-dimensional journey where, after using an experimental drug, he is provided a glimpse into a parallel universe. The film features appearances from Keith Morris and Jack Black.

“From the streets of Seattle to the psychedelic skies of a unicorn-run dystopia, our filmmakers are transporting audiences to new dimensions with stories that explore the nuance of disability,...

Poland’s American Film Festival readies for its — lucky — 13th edition, unspooling Nov. 8-13 in Wrocław.

The fest, which will open with “Bones and All” and close with Florian Zeller’s “The Son,” will once again combine classics with contemporary titles, for instance pairing Nancy Buirski’s doc “Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy” with John Schlesinger’s Oscar-winner, or introducing retrospectives dedicated to Robert Altman and Nina Menkes.

Menkes — behind “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power” — will also get Aff’s Indie Star Award. Previous recipients include Todd Solondz, David Gordon Green, Hal Hartley, Whit Stillman, Rosanna Arquette and John Waters, who came to Poland last year.

“It was amazing,” Waters tells Variety, and he was “pleasantly surprised and flattered” by the local audience’s knowledge of his work.

“They really knew who I was! My favorite thing happened during a Q&a, when this man, who looked like an old Communist,...

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Murmur, the new horror movie from indie filmmaker Mark Polish, will have its world premiere at the Oldenburg Film Festival, the fall event known as “Germany’s Sundance.”

Polish is best known as one half, with brother Michael, of the writing/directing team The Polish brothers, whose credits include Sundance hit Twin Falls, Idaho (1999), Jackpot (2001), The Astronaut Farmer (2006) and The Smell of Success. Michael Polish has typically taken over directing duties on Polish brothers films, with Mark playing a lead role and both siblings sharing screenwriting credits.

Mark Polish first stepped behind the camera for Headlock (2019), his feature debut starring Andy Garcia, Dianna Agron and James Frain.

Murmur, which he wrote and directed, follows a group of social media stars who become guinea pigs for a new app that breaks down the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Polish’s daughter Logan Polish, of...