Polish FiLM series to screen at the 2019 carnegie mellon international film festival

by Jolanta Lion, Festival Director

The 13th season of the Carnegie Mellon International Film Festival, FACES OF WO/MEN, is coming up March 21-April 7, 2019. We're excited to say we have a robust and unique Polish Series featured this season - Another Day of Life, Fugue, and My Friend the Polish Girl. 

I would like to note that we're very proud to have booked these fantastic and important films--every one is a Pittsburgh premiere, and we will be the first to screen My Friend the Polish Girl in all of North America! Additionally, we are bringing three wonderful Polish filmmakers to participate in post-film Q&As and workshops with local university students. We are honored to host the animator of Another Day of Life, Dominik Wawrzyniak, as well as the co-directors of My Friend the Polish Girl, Ewa Banaszkiewicz and Mateusz Dymek. 
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About the films:

Another Day of Life (Poland/Spain/Germany/Belgium/Hungary, 2018, 85 min)

Synopsis: Based on renowned reporter Ryszard Kapuściński's book of the same name, ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE tells the gripping story of Kapuściński's three-month trip to civil war torn Angola in 1975. An idealist, Kapuściński is a friend to lost causes and revolutions. Although he has been to many front lines before, Angola changes him forever. Through both animation and live action footage, ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE blurs the line between action thriller, biopic, and documentary while  vividly capturing the chaos and insanity of the war and Kapuściński's experiences. As he witnesses bloody horrors and questions the role of the war reporter, Kapuściński undergoes a deep change as a human being and is reborn - as a writer.
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Event Information and Tickets for Another Day of Life
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Fugue (Fuga) (Poland/Czech Republic/Sweden, 2018, 102 min)

​Synopsis: Alicja has no memory and no knowledge about how she lost it. In two years, she manages to build a new, independent self, away from home. She doesn't want to remember the past. When her family finds her, Alicja is forced to fit into the role of mother, daughter and wife, surrounded by what seem to be complete strangers. But Alicja sees them as strangers, and whatever ordeals she experienced while she was missing has eradicated the cheerful, compliant personality they remember. As Alicja learns more about the woman she supposedly was, the more fractured her precarious sense of self becomes.  FUGUE is a psychological journey of self-realization through the darkest parts of humanity, accomplished with unsettling cinematography and truly striking direction from Agnieszka Smoczynska.

Event Information and Tickets for Fugue (Fuga)

My Friend the Polish Girl (UK, 2018, 87 min)

​Synopsis: MY FRIEND THE POLISH GIRL borrows from cinema verite and video bloggers to create a rare naturalism in style and performance. A young, rich girl, Katie, decides to make a documentary film about Alicja, an impulsive Polish actress living in London. During the making of the film, the interference of Katie in the life of her character proves to have serious consequences, both in their relationship and the film’s narrative. Set in a post-Brexit-vote London, Katie’s colonizing, disruptive presence in Alicja’s life mirrors the treatment of migrants in the UK: Welcomed, used, then discarded. MY FRIEND THE POLISH GIRL is a raw, sexual, and visually brash film exploring the abusive power and control over someone’s intimacy.

Event Information and Tickets for My Friend the Polish Girl

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