'Ida' and 'Floating Skyscrapers' (Płynące wieżowce) with english subtitles

'Ida' won the Golden Lion award during Gdynia Film Festival 2013.

'Floating Skyscrapers' won East of West Award during Karlovy Vary Interanational Film Festival 2013

Poland 1962 Anna is a novice, an orphan brought up by nuns in the convent. She has to see Wanda, the only living relative, before she takes her vows. Wanda tells Anna that Anna is Jewish. Both women start a journey not only to find their family tragic story, but who they really are and where they belong. They question their religions and ideas they believed in. Both are trying to go on living but only one of them can.

'Pawlikowski also beautifully captures a pivotal transitional moment in his homeland’s history—from the strictures of the immediate post-war Communist period to a more liberal socialism, from dilapidated cobblestone streets to modernist architecture, from classical music to John Coltrane, and from Wanda’s fatalism to Ida’s humanism'.

Anthony Kaufman, SCREEN INTERNATIONAL

 

'Ida runs only 80 minutes, but director Pawel Pawlikowski makes virtually every one of them count, so their cumulative weight makes for a rich, deep and (yes) heavy cinematic experience. Pawlikowski, who turned heads in 2000 with Last Resort and again with My Summer of Love in 2004, returns to his native Poland after a 42-year absence. The setting, though, isn’t contemporary free-market Poland; it’s in the early 1960s – Communist, grungy, haunted by the ghosts and horrors of the Second World War. Exquisitely composed, shot in lustrous black-and-white, it’s the story of an orphaned Catholic novitiate, Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), who, a week before taking her vows, is ordered by the Mother Superior to visit an aunt (Agala Kulesza) named Wanda whom she never knew she had. A chain-smoking, hard-drinking Communist judge, Wanda informs Anna that she is in fact a Jew, born Ida Lebenstein during the war. Together they embark on a life-changing journey through the past and into the mysteries of the self. In its gravitas, austere sensuality and pacing, Ida echoes the work of such European masters as Bresson, Dreyer, Bergman and Tarr without this being in any way burdensome. Unforgettable'.

James Adams, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER ***** ( 5 x stars)

 

01.12     13:20   17:05

02.12     13:50   15:35   17:20   21:25

03.12     12:00   13:40   15:25   17:10   21:20

04.12     12:50   14:45   16:30   18:15

05.12     12:50   14:45   16:30   18:15

 

Strong and disciplined Kuba is sideswiped by the feelings unearthed when he meets handsome Mikal. Their connection is instantaneous and intoxicating, leaving Kuba to grapple with conflicting emotions. Suddenly his comfortable life with his girlfriend Sylwie is less interesting, and after training for fifteen years, his motivation to compete as a top-tier athlete dissipates. Unable to deny himself any longer, Kuba begins a relationship with Mikal. As Sylwie’s dreams of a life with Kuba slip away, Kuba accepts who he is and what he wants, only to find himself drowning in the destruction of his desires.

 

This intimate and bold second feature from Polish director Tomasz Wasilewski captures the myriad consequences of finding love in forbidden places. Mikal’s love acts as a vessel of self-liberation for Kuba amid the restrictive structures of Warsaw. With symbolism and an artful eye, Wasilewski illustrates the often-twisted nature of life, as the young men find happiness in each other within a dogmatic society.

 

01.12 - 05.12. 2013 -   h 17:15   19:15

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