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Up next from Hellhole and Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight filmmaker Bartosz M. Kowalski is a new dark horror fantasy that sees a nursing home invaded by eerie monsters: Night Silence. The official Night Silence teaser gives glimpses of the creatures in a story and tone akin to Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth.

Kowalski co-wrote the screenplay with Pawel Maslona and Mirella Zaradkiewicz.

In Night Silence, “Lucjan, a retired actor, is placed in a nursing home in the middle of the countryside by his son. Nothing definitive, just for a few months while the house is being renovated. Reluctant at first, he is won over by the hospitality of the staff and residents. Soon, however, a wave of murders terrorizes the place. Tormented by terrifying nightmares, Lucjan must face a grotesque threat if he wants to get out of there alive.”

Maciej Damiecki, Zdzislaw Wardejn, and Wlodzimierz Press star.

Polish-born cinematographer Michal Dymek has won Golden Frog — the main compeition prize — at this year’s Camerimage Film Festival.

Dymek was handed the award this evening at the festival’s closing ceremony by the Camerimage competition jury, which was headed by Cate Blanchett. She was joined by Anna Higgs, Sandy Powell, Anthony Dod Mantle, Rodrigo Prieto, Lukasz Zal, and Jolanta Dylewska.

Directed by Magnus von Horn, The Girl with the Needle debuted at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and has been selected as Denmark’s submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the Oscars.

The film follows Karoline (Sonne), a young factory worker, who is struggling to survive in post-World War I Copenhagen. When she finds herself unemployed, abandoned, and pregnant, she meets Dagmar (Dyrholm), a charismatic woman running an underground adoption agency, helping mothers find foster homes for their unwanted children. With nowhere else to turn,...

The acclaimed Danish period horror drama The Girl with the Needle, shot by cinematographer Michal Dymek, took home the Camerimage Film Festival’s Golden Frog Saturday night in Toruń, Poland. The winner was selected by a jury led by two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett.

Camerimage famously celebrates the art of cinematography, so its honors are extended to the directors of photography behind the movies exhibited in its main competition. But this year’s jury made a point of adding a “special mention” for The Girl with the Needle‘s 40-year-old director, Magnus von Horn.

The masterfully realized period thriller is loosely based on the true story of Danish serial killer Dagmar Overbye, who helped impoverished women kill their unwanted children in 1910s Copenhagen.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s contributing film critic, Leslie Felperin, summed up the film as “a dark, urgently timely Danish drama” that’s “like one of those fiendish...

In horror “Night Silence,” Polish director Bartosz M. Kowalski follows retired Lucjan (Maciej Damięcki), moved into a nursing home by his son. The residence is hiding a secret, but the film took on another “terrifying dimension” after they wrapped the shoot.

“Maciej played a dying actor and unfortunately, this story turned out to be true,” Kowalski tells Variety. Damięcki passed away last November, before the premiere. He was posthumously awarded for his performance at the Polish Film Festival.

“It was emotional for all of us,” admits the director.

“I quickly understood he had to play the main character. It was love at first sight. On set, I worried the subject we were tackling might be difficult for him and for most of our actors, who were over 80. But Maciej always joked a lot, sang and even danced between takes. He didn’t get to see it, which is very painful for me.

Greta Gerwig is set to be honored with the Pioneer of the Year Award by the Will Rogers Motion Picture Pioneers Foundation.

The “Barbie” writer and director will receive the award at the Pioneer of the Year Dinner, set for Sept. 25 at The Beverly Hilton. The event benefit will honor Gerwig and raise proceeds for Wrmppf’s Pioneers Assistance Fund, a charity that provides financial assistance and supportive counseling to individuals in the motion picture distribution and exhibition community in times of need.

The award is honored to members of the motion picture industry with exceptional leadership, service to the community and commitment to philanthropy.

Gerwig, who has written and directed Oscar-nominated films like “Lady Bird,” and “Little Women,” is currently working on an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” book series for Netflix. In February, the actor, writer and director revealed that a script for the...

Agnieszka Holland’s refugee drama The Green Border has taken the top prize for best film at the Polish Film Awards. The black-and-white feature, which looks at the inhumane treatment of refugees trying to cross the natural border between Belarus and Poland, premiered to critical acclaim at the Venice Film Festival last year but came under attack from Poland’s far-right government, which called the movie “Nazi propaganda” for its supposedly negative depiction of Polish police and border guards. The political attacks are thought to have influenced the Polish Oscar committee’s decision not to put Green Border forward as Poland’s best international film contender this year, instead selecting Dk and Hugh Welchman’s Hugh animated literary adaptation The Peasants (which did not get nominated).

But a lot has changed in Poland since. Parliamentary elections last October ousted the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which had ruled for 8 years,...

Following the October parliamentary election that saw the defeat of the right-wing Law and Justice party and appointment of leader of the opposition party Donald Tusk as prime minister, Polish filmmakers are cautiously readying for change.

“So far, our cinema authorities have not changed. It remains to be seen whether they will change their approach to funding more topical or controversial projects. Recent years have been very difficult in this regard,” says acclaimed director Agnieszka Holland.

Holland’s latest film, refugee drama “Green Border,” had been attacked by the right-wing government last year. Her next film, “Franz,” about Franz Kafka, is a Czech-German-Polish co-production to be sold at EFM by Films Boutique.

“We know everything and nothing about Kafka. There are dozens of detailed biographies and the reasons for his growing importance remain a mystery. I am trying to put this film together like a scattered jigsaw puzzle,” she adds.

In the 1930s, the Polish port city of Gdynia became a brief landing pad for immigrants from neighboring countries, including Jews who sought safety and prosperity before the rise of Nazi Germany. Though the Museum of Gdynia quietly explains this messy history, obvious markers of that past aren’t visible across the city. Its marina boasts a massive monument to 18th-century Polish military hero Tadeusz Kościuszko, whose actions became the stuff of legend both for the Poles and the Americans, but otherwise Gdynia stands anew, with sparkling metallic structures surrounding its stretch of the Puck Bay and the Polanka Redłowska forest.

By contrast, in the nearby town of Gdańsk, with its brightly colored and narrow buildings that hug a labyrinthine waterway, the markers of history are more immediately apparent to the naked eye. Much of the buildings have been reconstructed such that nearly every street teems with homages to the past.

Closing ceremony of festival in Gdynia sees Polish film community speak up against “awful hatred” directed at Holland in recent weeks.

Pawel Maslona’s second feature Scarborn (Kos) won the Grand Prix - Golden Lion at the 48th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia whose closing ceremony saw the Polish film community express their solidarity with Agnieszka Holland in the light of the vociferous political campaign against her and her film The Green Border.

In his acceptance speech, Maslona spoke out against the “awful hatred” directed at Holland in recent weeks and noted that, despite Poland being a country with a strong Christian faith,...

Exclusive: Jason Mitchell (Mudbound) and Bartosz Bielenia (Corpus Christi) have joined Jacek Braciak (Leave No Traces) for historical action title Scarborn, based on the story of Polish general and revolutionary war hero Tadeusz Kościuszko who is best known for fighting at George Washington’s side in the American War of Independence.

The project, which is the directed by Pawel Maślona and has just wrapped its shoot, also stars Robert Wieckiewicz (In Darkness) and Agnieszka Grochowska (Leave No Traces). Daniel Baur’s K5 International has boarded worldwide sales on the project.

Scarborn, which is written by Michał A. Zieliński, sees Kościuszko (Braciak) and his African American friend and former slave Domingo (Mitchell) return to Poland to organize an uprising and fight against the Russian invasion by mobilizing the Polish nobility and peasants. They are followed by a ruthless Russian captain, Dunin (Wieckiewicz) who wants to capture the general at any cost...

Polish Days takes place during the New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw.

New films by Bartosz Konopka, Jan Komasa and Leszek Dawid are among the line-up of 25 completed films, works in progress and projects to be presented at the sixth edition of the Polish Days (July 30 - August 1) during the New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland.

Konopka’s The Mute, which was presented as a work in progress at last year’s Polish Days, is among five completed films being shown in closed industry screenings to international sales agents, distributors, film funders and festival programmers.

The further...

Ten world premieres are among the 12 films competing for the Crystal Globe at Central and Eastern Europe’s premier film festival, Karlovy Vary, which runs June 29-July 7. The competition titles include leading Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians,” an exploration of nationality and national trauma; Argentine Ana Katz’s family drama “Sueno Florianopolis”; and Canadian filmmaker Sebastien Pilote’s “The Fireflies Are Gone,” the story of a rebellious teen relationship.

A standout performance by Caleb Landry Jones dominates Peter Brunner’s dark Austro-American drama “To the Night,” while two filmmakers returning to Karlovy Vary present “noticeably more poetic new films”: Russia’s Ivan Tverdovsky (“Zoology”) will screen “Jumpman,” while Israeli director Joseph Madmony brings his third premiere to West Bohemia, the drama “Redemption,” co-directed by cinematographer Boaz Y. Yakov.

Czech Republic-based filmmaker Olmo Omerzu will screen a road movie centered on boyhood friendship,...

While I do not understand a single word spoken in the trailer for Pawel Maslona's  upcoming Polish feature Panic Attack (Atak Paniki) there is absolutely zero problem understanding exactly what is happening. The premise is a simple one with the film following a disparate group of characters as they move from peace to panic and the trailer here is a marvel of spiky energy and playful visuals. There's an awful lot to love here - including an appearance from Danish star Nicolas Bro as a sweaty air passenger - as Maslona lays out his tales of urban angst and I can only hope for a chance to see the full feature soon. Check out the teaser below....

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

New projects revealed, including thriller described as “David Lynch meets Ken Loach”.

New films by internationally feted Polish filmmakers Jan Komasa, Kuba Czekaj and Dorota Kedzierzawska were among 20 projects presented to sales agents, distributors and festival programmers at the sixth edition of the Polish Days (8-10 August) during this week’s New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw.

Komasa - who made his feature debut with Suicide Room - and his producer Leszek Bodzak of Aurum Film (The Last Family) pitched the contemporary social drama Corpus Christi which is based on screenwriter Mateusz Pacewicz’s first screenplay for cinema.

The €1m project is being structured as a Polish-French co-production and will begin principal photography in spring 2018.

Bodzak also presented a second feature project, Borys Lankosz’s thriller Dark, Almost Night, which he described as “David Lynch meets Ken Loach”, to begin shooting this autumn with The Last Family’s Dawid Ogrodnik and Aleksandra Konieczna in the cast...

A chilling, romantic, surprisingly humorous take on demonic possession. Admittedly, Marcin Wrona’s final project, Demon, garnered all the more attention following the director/writer’s untimely death, yet it’s a film that deserves all that attention, and so much more, based on its own merits. Despite the title, this Polish-Israeli co-production, written by Wrona and Pawel Maslona,…

The post Review: Marcin Wrona’s Chilling Demon appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Demon

Written by Pawel Maslona & Marcin Wrona

Directed by Marcin Wrona

Poland/Israel, 2015

Part ghost story, part social commentary, director Marcin Wrona’s Demon offers plenty of appeal while remaining frustratingly elusive. The stellar performance from Itay Tiran, a genuinely creepy aesthetic, and a healthy dose of dark humor keep this possession drama interesting throughout. Unfortunately, the final act is a mess, which makes for an arbitrary and unsatisfying conclusion.

Piotr (Tiran) is a young man in love. He has dreams of living happily-ever-after with his fiancée, Zaneta (Agnieszka Zulewska), and living on her father’s farm in the Polish countryside. Piotr arrives in town and immediately starts making renovations in advance of the massive wedding that Zaneta’s father, Zgmunt (Andrzej Grabowski), has meticulously planned. Things take a decidedly creepy turn, however, when some errant excavator work unearths a human skeleton in the backyard. Unwilling to upset Zaneta, Piotr...