This year’s crop of contenders in the New Polish Films competition at the ERA New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland continue the unbroken chain of film artists who are acknowledged as world-class masters of their craft. This year’s program is especially strong, with a forceful representation of emerging women talents. Malgorzala Szumowska brings a masterful directorial hand and an intellectual discipline to her latest film “33 Scenes From Life”, which won the Spec...

  by Sandy Mandelberger, Online Dailies Editor   The Polish-Swedish Film Meetings introduced a number of exciting new projects from both Polish and Swedish producers. In networking meetings with producers, sales agents and financiers, these projects in development will undoubtedly profit from the atmosphere of cooperation that has been initiated between the Era New Horizons International Film Festival and the Swedish Film Institute. “Callgirl“ is a ...

  by Sandy Mandelberger, Online Dailies Editor   First, a little history……..In the 17th century, Sweden waged a series of invasions against Poland which included a five year occupation known in Polish as Potop Szwedzki, "the Swedish Deluge”. The Poles successfully drove back the Swedish invaders in 1656 and celebrate with a holiday to commemorate their victory. Well, the Swedish are back, albeit under more friendly circumstances, for the l...

  by Sandy Mandelberger, Online Dailies Editor The ERA New Horizons International Film Festival is shining the spotlight on contemporary Swedish cinema in the program Kino Szwecji: Cinema of Sweden, which is introducing Polish audiences to a new generation of film talents.  “Darling” is a survey of the empty consumerist lives of a group of young women in contemporary Stockholm, that won the Nordic Film Prize at the Goteborg Film Festival for its writer/director/cinem...

The ERA New Horizons International Film Festival is shining the spotlight on contemporary Swedish cinema in the program Kino Szwecji: Cinema of Sweden, which is introducing Polish audiences to a new generation of film talents. “Darling” is a survey of the empty consumerist lives of a group of young women in contemporary Stockholm, that won the Nordic Film Prize at the Goteborg Film Festival for its writer/director/cinematographer Johan King. In “Fishy”, director Maria Blom, one such St...

The ERA New Horizons International Film Festival has a reverence for “film as art”. This is indeed the focus of the FILMS ABOUT ART International Competition, which will present 14 feature documentaries from around the world. An international jury will award a prize of 10,000 euros, with a guarantee of distribution in Poland. Peter Greenaway, who will be at the Festival tomorrow to deliver a lecture on film and art, will present his latest film REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE, which uses the famed...

  by Sandy Mandelberger, Online Dailies Editor The ERA New Horizons International Film Festival has a reverence for “film as art”. This is indeed the focus of the FILMS ABOUT ART International Competition, which will present 14 feature documentaries from around the world. An international jury will award a prize of 10,000 euros, with a guarantee of distribution in Poland.  Peter Greenaway, who will be at the Festival tomorrow to deliver a lecture on film and...

  by Sandy Mandelberger, Online Dailies Editor Peter Greenaway, one of the most important contemporary film stylists, arrived today as a guest of the ERA New Horizons International Film Festival. The director will attend the Polish premiere of his latest film REMBRANDT’S J’ACCUSE!, presented within the FILMS ABOUT ART International Competition on 26 and 27 July. The documentary meditation on the influences of Rembrandt on modern-day filmmaking had its world premiere at ...

  by Sandy Mandelberger, Online Dailies Editor THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE, an award-winning French Canadian film, opened the outdoor screening series on the central Market Square in Wroclaw for the 9th edition of the Era New Horizons International Film Festival. The film is the touching tale of an Inuit man who is relocated to Quebec City in the 1950s to cure his tuberculosis, provoking a culture clash between the native sensibilities and the Anglo-Saxon world view....

  by Sandy Mandelberger, Online Dailies Editor Guy Maddin, the Canadian filmmaker who is the subject of a Festival Retrospective at the 9th edition of the ERA New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland. His   magnum opus BRAIN UPON THE BRAIN was presented last evening at the Wroclaw Opera House, with a chamber orchestra, foley sound artists and a narrator. Living and working in his beloved Winnipeg, an industrial city in the Canadian heartlan...

  by Sandy Mandelberger, Online Dailies Editor It takes a filmmaker of great daring to successfully combine genres and create a hybrid that is unique and exhilarating. Such is the case with Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, the 47-year-old Thai film director and screenwriter, who is part of a Thai new wave that includes such auteur names Wisit Sasanatieng and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His singular films have made him one of the more intriguing film stylists of the moment. Pen-Ek beg...

by Sandy Mandelberger, Online Dailies Editor   Michael Haneke relishes his reputation as one of the controversial directors working in the film arts. He is a provocateur with a mission to shock audiences out of their complacency and contemplate the good, bad and ugly of modern society. “My films are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false answers……for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus”, he stated in a recent inter...

  by Sandy Mandelberger, Online Dailies Editor To the untrained ear, Wroclaw, Poland, the site of the ERA NEW HORIZONS International Film Festival, is generally mispronounced as "ro-claw". I've been learning to offer the correct pronunciation, which is more like "rotz-vav". The former German city known as Breslau has been on-again and off-again part of the Polish empire for centuries. It is now a major economic and cultural center for the modern state of Polan...

The heart of the 9th edition of the ERA NEW HORIZONS International Film Festival, which begins its 11-day marathon of film premieres, special events and music concerts on July 23, is the NEW HORIZONS International Competition. This year’s program includes a selection of 14 premieres of a truly international roster of filmmakers, covering a mix of genres and styles to offer a survey of the best in international cinema. This year, three awards will be granted: the Grand Prix for Best Film, award...

  HELEN (UK)  by Sandy Mandelberger, Festival  Dailies Editor The heart of the 9th edition of the ERA NEW HORIZONS International Film Festival, which begins its 12 day marathon of film premieres, special events and music concerts on July 23, is the NEW HORIZONS International Competition. This year’s program includes a selection of 14 premieres of a truly international roster of filmmakers, covering a mix of genres and styles to offer a survey of the best in international c...

THE WHITE RIBBON, the celebrated Austrian film by auteur Michael Haneke, which recently won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, will open the 9th edition of the ERA NEW HORIZONS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, to be held in the city of Wroclaw, Poland from 23 July to 2 August. The film, which also won the prestigious FIPRESCI International Critics Prize in Cannes, is set in a small town in northern Germany just before World War I, and refers to the origins of the totalitarian systems that...

  by Sandy Mandelberger, Festival Dailies Editor THE WHITE RIBBON, the celebrated Austrian film by auteur Michael Haneke, which recently won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, will open the 9th edition of the ERA NEW HORIZONS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, to be held in the city of Wroclaw, Poland from 23 July to 2 August. The film, which also won the prestigious FIPRESCI International Critics Prize in Cannes, is set in a small town in northern Germany just before World War...