Established in 2005 by its director Hanna Kosinska Hartowicz, the New York Polish Film Festival celebrated its 15^th edition with eight feature films and four documentaries at the Scandinavia House on New York’s Park Avenue from May 22-24 and June 1-2.  Co-funded  by the Polish Filmmakers Association and the Polish Film Institute and  Polish cultural institutions, the festival continued its past record  of presenting  a  carefully created program of recent polish cinema.  The selection of films served a relatively small audience of individuals mostly of Polish origin and fans of Polish films. There are several older and larger Polish film festivals in the United States such as the Chicago and Los Angeles festivals which were established in 1989 and 1999 respectively.

In the United States theatrical access to Polish films remains problematic.  Only a small number of European films are exported to the US and in 2017 close to 90 percent of those entering theatrical distribution were from England and France followed by a small number of productions from Spain, Germany, Italy and Poland.  England had a 49 percent share of   admissions to European films that year and Poland only 2 percent. An analysis by Terry Hung showed that of 852 films with a box office of at least $5 million only 30 European films met her criteria. These films generated only 0.2 percent of the total box office of the five year period she covered. Breaking into USA theatrical distribution is very difficult and imported Indian films do much better than the European ones. Numerous factors impair getting foreign films into US theaters.  A large number of foreign films, including many Polish titles, can be accessed through the on-line screening platforms of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and smaller services. Other companies offer on line services to individuals learning the language in which the film was made. Digital distribution is having a dramatic impact on theatrical distribution and the larger screening corporations increasingly pre-empty theatrical distribution by buying or co-funding foreign language films for their services. Further, there has been a steep decline of the art house circuit, theatres that used to offer foreign language film programs and of non-theatrical platforms for foreign films.

If France has been more successful in placing its films into the US market it is in part due to well organized corporate and official efforts to propagate films as an integral part of French culture. There are numerous French film festivals held here and film related events organized by French cultural services and the FIAF. Funds are also made available to stage French themed cultural events at institutions of higher education. Though the 2019 New York Polish film festival was staged in walking distance from the Polish Consulate General no related festival event was held there. It seems that the French understanding of film as an integral part of French culture which makes an important contribution to public diplomacy is not matched by any other European nations. France retains therefor its second place behind the United Kingdom as an exporter of European films to the United States.

Yet escape from the dearth of foreign language films in the US is possible as demonstrated by Pawel Pawliskowski’s film achievements with his Oscar winning IDA in 2014 and more recently the 2018 film Cold War. Both productions exceeded box office expectations in the United States and foreign territories caused by getting recognized awards, outstanding positive evaluations by influential trade and national press publications as well as excellent ratings by review services such as Rotten Tomatoes.

IDA received two Oscars, including the coveted best foreign language film award, 66 other international awards, and grossed $15.3 million including $3.8 in Poland. Like Cold War it was picked up by Amazon Prime Video. From a commercial perspective the second 2018 feature by Pawliskowski, Cold War, was even more successful, generating to date global revenues of $19.4 million of which $4.8 were generated in Poland. Driving the success for this near perfect film shot in black and white was receiving awards at the European Film Awards in 2019, including best film and best director, the Cannes prize for best director and a large number of international awards.  Though Cold War was nominated for several Oscars and ranked second by Jeva Lang in her evaluation of 37 Oscar contending films the Cold War was left empty handed.

This year, the New York Polish film festival offered a very attractive program touching on diverse but unique subjects expressing the innovative spirits of the filmmakers. In Adrian Panek’s Werewolf, a group of youngsters escape from the Gross-Rosen concentration camp during the chaotic last weeks of the collapse of the Nazi regime while Russian forces are taking over. In this gripping tale of survival a group of young boys and girls escape from the camp and find refuge in an abandoned mansion in an isolated forest. But they have to fight starvation and a pack of shepherd dogs from the concentration camp trained to attack anyone not knowing how to command them. A strong narration with naturalistic overtones drives the dramatic story without compromise. Plausibility for the viewer is retained and insights into the unusual adaptive behavior modes of the children are provided. This includes the search for food and water, coping with a lost German soldier hidden in the forest and his disoriented Soviet counterpart who gets into the mansion and tries to rape a girl. The children learn how to use the camp’s dogs for their own protection.  Fortunately, the film does not develop into a customary menacing horror story and lets the mostly non-professional child actors show their humanity in spite of having been brutalized for years in the concentration camp. The contribution of Panek to understand the survival story of stressed out children was honored with awards at the Tallin film festival.

Tower: A bright Day by  Jagoda Szelc  was included this year in the  Berlinale Forum program and received the Best Feature Debut and Best Screenplay awards at the Polish Gdynia Film Festival. The film  is a dramatic endeavor to elucidate the psychological  underpinnings of a dysfunctional family. Its members get together at a country summer home to celebrate with young Nina who will get her first communion.  Two sisters are in the center of the film with one, Kaja, playing a subdued mysterious role. She is the natural mother of Nina who has been raised as her own daughter by Mula, Kaja’s sister. This a situation that needs to be kept secret from all under any circumstance as the clear commands to Kaja in the beginning of the story  indicate.  However, Nina grows closer to Kaja with a growing affection which drives Mula to suspicion and resentment. Mula’s mother lives upstairs in isolation, is rarely seen with the rest of the family and seems mentally impaired. Members of the family and Kaja maintain that she was living abroad while Kaja actually spent years in an institution. There a several children in this film and a dog who seem to be having have a great time in spite of the adults bickering and fights. A village priest shows erratic behavior patterns, and Mula fears that Kaja is changing Nina’s catholic belief to something, although we never learn what it could be because Szelc does not spell out her suspicion.  Some critics of the film suggest that this silent immurement adds to the horror atmosphere the director may have intended. I saw a very good cinematographic study with ethnological undertones of a dysfunctional summer  family gathering and great performances by  Anna  Krotoska as Mula  and Malgorzata Sczerbwska as Kaka supported by Leila Hennessy  as Nina.

Towards the end, Tower takes a bizarre turn. During an evening party we observe Kaja giving drinks to all the adults though not drinking herself. Evening and night passes and the motionless bodies of the adults are in the house and next to the cars. Kaja assures the kids that they are just sleeping while the viewers may conclude that they had been poisoned by Kaja avenging her treatment by the family. Jumping to the next set of scenes we observe how zombielike members of the family and others from the village are descending down a meadow towards the forest. This surprising dipping into an apocalyptic ending compounds the narrative’s mystery.  Tower did not make it into my list of noteworthy Polish films given its structural problems, neither a grounded psychological portrait of this family is provided nor a plausible account of the fractured narrative ending.

Probably the most striking film at this year’s Polish Festival was Filip Bajon’s 2018 film Butler or the more appropriate Polish title Kamerdyner. Spanning a long period of time from before the first world war to the breakdown of Germany’s occupation of Poland by Soviet forces in 1945, Bajon portrays the socio-political changes impacting the German von Krauss family and their Kashubian neighbors in the vast agricultural estate and impressive palest the von Krauss own in the Pomeranian border region close to the coast. With cinematographic precision Bajon showss the landscape, and more importantly the members of the von Kraus family and the individuals serving them during the momentous changes they experience over decades. He records life on the estate when the region was German and became part of Poland after the Versailles treaty in 1918, returned to German rule in 1939 and occupied and liberated by the Soviets in 1945. The story runs from festive parties arranged by the von Kraus for the local German nobility and bourgeoisie to the head of the family being thrown to his death out of the window of the palace by Russian soldiers. In between we have the Krauss family feuds. One son, Count Hermann turned gay and as a member of the Nazi SA is killed in 1934 by the other Nazis, another who is the son of the oldest von Kraus and a Kashubian mother probably raped by him is denied education and forced to work as the family’s butler. He has an affair with his sister Countess Marita though does not know that both have the same father. The plot and subplots are well choreographed by Bajon which somehow impairs character development but does not prevent viewers from reflexive insights into this turbulent period and the fates of Germany, Poland and Kashubia. They understand that no matter what happened most of the members of the von Krauss family insist on staying German and maintain their superiority complex and contempt for the Polish laborers and officials and for the Kashubians working the von Krauss’ lands. From the discussion with Filip Bajon it is clear that his film was well researched because a film spanning over fifty years fascinated him.  His chronicle also includes a reconstruction of the massacre at Piasnics, a small Kashubian village prompted by German officials. Carried out from 1939 to 1940 it was labelled as the “Intelligence Action of Pommern [Pomerania]” an action deemed necessary to germanify that area. A paramilitary organization of ethnic Germans who before the German takeover were Polish citizens murdered in a forest near Piasnics Polish intellectuals and Kashubian community leaders. Between the fall of 1939 and the spring of 1940 an estimated 12,000 people were killed near Piasnics. The section about the Piasnics killing Bajon, depicts the murder of  mental hospital patients from  German cities. The superb reconstruction of sets and events over a period covering fifty year, outstanding performances by the leading and supportive actors, the cinematography, a well-constructed plausible narrative, and the factually based stories make this feature an outstanding addition to Polish cinema.

Claus Mueller   filmexchange@gmail.com