American Film Festival Audience Awards Announced

Hunky Dory and Eat That Question – Frank Zappa in His Own Words Win Audience Award at the American Film Festival in Poland

The seventh edition of the American Film Festival, the only showcase of contemporary American independent films in Eastern and Central Europe, has come to an end. Audiences at Wrocław's New Horizons Cinema saw 114 films, including 58 Polish premieres and six European premieres. With 199 screenings in total, the festival was attended by 23,776 viewers. 



Festival audiences voted for the best films and the winners were announced at the closing gala on Sunday 30th of October, after screening of Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals. From among the 14 feature films by independent American filmmakers that were presented as part of the Spectrum competition, viewers chose Hunky Dory by Michael Curtis Johnson, who attended the festival and collected the award personally. The director of the award-winning film – with the help of his drag queen protagonist Sidney (in a moving performance by Tomas Pais) – shows that, to be a good father, you do not need to have a perfectly ordered life, nor do you need to fit within the confines of generally accepted heterosexual norms. Ten films were screened as part of the American Docs section. According to audiences, the festival’s top documentary was Thorsten Schütte’s Eat That Question – Frank Zappa in His Own Words, a portrait of the legendary and uncompromising experimental musician made up of statements by Zappa himself from different periods of his work. The winning feature film received USD 10,000, while the winning documentary took  home USD 5,000. The prize money was provided by BNY Mellon. The Indie Star Award went to the doyen of the New York avant-garde scene, Jonas Mekas.



As in the previous years, this edition of the American Film Festival presented  the full spectrum of American cinema, ranging from documentaries, features, experimental movies, to works by masters and independent filmmakers. The program included: Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson, Wiener-Dog by Todd Solondz, Certain Women by Kelly Reichardt, Moonlight by Barry Jenkins, The Fang Family directed by Jason Bateman, Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!!, American Honey by Andrea Arnold, Swiss Army Man directed by Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, Jeff Nichols' Loving and Midnight Special as well as Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea and Christine by Antonio Campos. The European premiers of films such as Jenny Carchman’s Enlighten Us: The Rise and Fall of James Arthur Ray, Adam Pinney’s The Arbalest, Jason Grant Smith’s I Voted?, Matthew Lessner’s Automatic at Sea, Peter at the Farm by Tony Stone and Paul Taylor’s Driftwood also screened at the Wrocław’s US indie feast. 



The 2016 festival included of 13 sections; because in 2016 our host city of Wrocław is the European Capital of Culture, the festival repertoire sought to highlight ties between European and American cinema. Over a dozen cult films made by European directors in the USA have been showed. They span from Sergio Leone, to Werner Herzog, Bruno Dumont, to Lars von Trier, Agnès Varda and Wim Wenders. The connection between New and Old Continent has also been emphasized by this year’s retrospective devoted to the European films of the genius director and actor Orson Welles.



Festival’s special guests, who conducted master classes in cinema for festival audiences, included directors Percy Adlon and Agnès Varda as well as Orson Welles' film editor, Frederik Muller. Filmmakers that projects were competing for the Audience Awards in both – Spectrum and American Docs, also met audiences in Wrocław: director Chad Hartigan (Morris From America), director Justin Tipping (Kicks), director Elisabeth Subrin (A Woman, A Part) and director Gina Abatemarco (Kivalina) as well as others industry representatives: producer Joshua Astrachan (Paterson, Kicks, Louder Than Bombs) and one of the co-founders of the SXSW Festival in Austin, producer and director Louis Black (Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny, Tower).



In a record 6th edition of US in Progress Wrocław industry program (October 26-28th) organized in the frame of the 7th American Film Festival 8 projects were presented, while 7 were eligible for the post-production in-kind awards (post-production services sponsored by the partners of the program). The winners are the following: 20 Weeks by Leena Pendharkar that received a free pass to Producers’ Network at 2017 Cannes Film Festival; Desolation by David Moscow received a soundtrack composed by Maciek Zieliński of Soundflower, Warsaw; The Inheritance by Laura Davis and Jessica Kaye is invited to color correct the movie at ColorOffOn in Warsaw; Savage Youth by Michael Curtis Johnson gets a final sound mix at Toya Studios in Lodz and acquisition offer from Ale Kino+ channel; La Barracuda by Julia Halperin and Jason Cortlund is invited to benefit from color correction and deliverables at Orka Film in Warsaw as well as take the Ale Kino+ channel acquisition offer; An American in Texas by Anthony Pedone gets color correction and deliverables in Multilab (part of Krakow Technology Park) as well as creative sound design from Soundflower in Warsaw; Untitled Hasidic Film by Joshua Z. Weinstein gets image post-production (including effects and deliverables) at Warsaw’s Fixafilm. In addition, invited guests took part in a special screening of the film Western Wonderland by Reza Sixo Safai. Besides presenting the projects to the professional audiences, the producers of the above projects took part in one on one meetings with European festival programmers, sales agents and distributors as well as less formal meetings. 2016 edition of US in Progress included presentations of European projects’ seeking American partners as well as discussion panels on European production system and successes and challenges of coproducing with Europe.