polish films – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

FATHERLAND (NYFF 2026) – Review by Diane Carson

September 22, 2026September 23, 2026 Diane Carson Fatherland, Hanns Zischler, Hendrik Handloegten, Pawel Pawlikowski, polish films, Sandra Hüller, thomas mann

Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland reminds viewers of the attentive commitment of Thomas Mann’s daughter Erika (an always superb Sandra Hüller) to her father (Hanns Zischler). In fact, the formidable Erika enjoyed a full life as an actress, writer, and rally driver. In 1946 she reported on the Nuremberg war crimes trials before traveling to California to care for Thomas who was being treated for lung cancer. In Fatherland’s 1949 Germany Erika and Thomas drive in their black Buick sedan across the ruins of Germany, from Frankfurt to Weimer, from the former city under US control to the latter under Soviet domination where Thomas delivers a passionate, courageous anti-Nazi address advocating freedom from tyranny.

Festivals Reviews

GLORIOUS SUMMER (SXSW 2025) – Review by Valerie Kalfrin

March 15, 2025March 15, 2025 Valerie Kalfrin Bartosz Szpak, Glorious Summer, Helena Ganjalyan, polish films, SXSW 2025

Glorious Summer teases a lot but comes up short in tension and suspense. In Polish with English subtitles, the film establishes that the world beyond is in some strife, with sounds like explosions far off at night, but it’s all rather cryptic. We don’t learn how or why the women came to this place, nor what they hope to achieve by leaving. When one character finally presses them to decide what’s important—security or freedom of choice—it feels like the thesis arrived too late. The cinematography and editing create the dreamy listlessness of sunny days, but Glorious Summer is more of a thought experiment than an intriguing whole.

Reviews

UNDER THE VOLCANO – Review by Jennifer Green

December 10, 2024December 10, 2024 Jennifer Green Agnieszka Jastrzebska, Damian Kocur, International Oscar, polish films, Roman Lutskyi, Sofia Berezovska, Under The Volcano

Under the Volcano is Poland’s entry for the International Oscar. It tells the story of a Ukrainian family vacationing in the Canary Islands who find themselves stuck in Spain when war breaks out in their home country. Flights are canceled, and the foursome spend several agonizing days awaiting a decision about whether and when they can return home. They go through the motions of continuing their vacation, but the sunny island setting belies the rising tension amongst them. The stress of what’s happening back home begins bubbling up, seeping in like the waves lapping at the island’s shores, hovering over them like the volcano looming on the Tenerife horizon. It’s a unique take to see a family’s coming-to-terms with the very start of a war that, in real life, is still unfolding.

Interviews

Producer Agnieszka Jastrzebska talks UNDER THE VOLCANO, Shooting War and the Oscar – Jennifer Green Interview

December 10, 2024December 10, 2024 Jennifer Green Agnieszka Jastrzebska, Damian Kocur, International Oscar, polish films, Roman Lutskyi, Sofia Berezovska, Under The Volcano

>Agnieszka Jastrzebska made her producing debut with Under the Volcano, Poland’s submission for this year’s international Oscar. Following a high-profile, multi-decade career in journalism – including entertainment journalism, Jastrzebska says it has been an interesting experience to see film production from another side, not as a journalist covering it, but as a person who is on the creator side. She gives a nod to “great women in cinema” who came before her in Poland, like Agnieszka Holland and Ewa Puszczynska. “Watching them, you are very inspired,” she says.

Festivals Reviews

KRZYK: LOSING CONTROL (SXSW2024) – Review by Leslie Combemale

March 15, 2024March 16, 2024 Leslie Combemale Ewa Wikiel, Gina Henkel, Halina Rasinski, Krzyk: Losing Control, polish films, SXSW2024

Krzyk: Losing Control, is a trippy, tense feature about one woman’s devolution from sanity triggered by layered traumatic experiences. The word Krzyk means scream in Polish, and is an apt name for a film that is often visceral for the viewer, and feels at once like a languid dreamscape and a tightly coiled spring about to explode. The film is unusual in that it doesn’t make the female protagonist particularly sympathetic. This is welcome in a world where women dealing with child loss are so often treated with kid gloves, or presented as martyrs and saints.

Movie of the Week

MOVIE OF THE WEEK December 8, 2023: THE PEASANTS

December 2, 2023December 3, 2023 Jennifer Merin animation, betsy bozdech, Cate Marquis, Dorota Kobiela Welchman, hugh welchman, jennifer merin, Kamila Urzedowska, leslie combemale, liz whittemore, loren king, motw, Movie of the Week, mptw, nikki fowler, Painting Animation Work Stations, Pam Grady, PAWS units, polish films, Robert Gulaczyk, sandie angulo chen, sony pictures classics, The Peasants, Wladyslaw Reymont

Polish author Wladyslaw Reymont’s epic, Nobel Prize-winning novel gets an appropriately impressive adaptation in Dorota Kobiela (DK) and Hugh Welchman’s The Peasants. Lushly and gorgeously animated using the same painstaking rotoscope process the duo and their talented crew earned accolades for with 2017’s Loving Vincent, the lovingly crafted film follows the inhabitants of a Polish farming village over the course of a year at the turn of the 20th century. Watching The Peasants is like seeing an Impressionist painting come to life.

Reviews

FUGUE – Review by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

March 20, 2023March 20, 2023 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Agnieszka Smoczyńska, fugue, Gabriela Muskala, polish films

The film begins as a dishevelled Alicja wanders dazed along train tracks, approaching a busy station where she promptly hitches up her skirt, squats, and pisses on the train platform for all to see. Two years later we find she has been institutionalised, suffering from the dissociative “fugue” of the film’s title, where a protective doctor decides to put her on television to see if they can discover her identity. It works, and overnight Alicja discovers that she is a woman called Kinga with a husband, young child and extended family. Returning to her original home as she waits for an identity card, Alicja’s past slowly returns to her as she discovers what led to her curious predicament.

Reviews

EO – Review by Diane Carson

December 27, 2022December 30, 2022 Diane Carson donkeys, EO, Ewa Piaskowska, Jerzy Skolimowski, Michal Dymek, Pawel Mykietyn, polish films

EO reveals life from a Sardinian donkey’s perspective. Individuals reveal who they are—values, priorities, empathy—in their interaction with animals. The brilliant, minimalist French director Robert Bresson documented exactly this in his 1966 Au Hasard, Balthazar, documenting the donkey Balthazar’s life. Updating the content, Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski reassesses this world through the donkey EO’s point of view as he experiences his life’s joys and tragedies.

Reviews

THE BALCONY MOVIE – Review by Diane Carson

November 28, 2022November 28, 2022 Diane Carson documentary, mubi, Paweł Łoziński, polish films, The Balcony Movie, true/false film festival

One clever documentarian, Polish director Paweł Łoziński, turned his pandemic isolation into a fascinating, revealing interaction with neighbors in The Balcony Movie. Shooting entirely from his second floor balcony in Warsaw, over two-and-half years, Łoziński asks questions and listens to random passers-by who agree to talk with him, and some don’t but are still included.

Reviews

HOLD TIGHT – Review by Diane Carson

June 6, 2022June 9, 2022 Diane Carson Harlan Coben, Hold Tight, netflix, polish films, series

Set in a Warsaw suburb, the Netflix series Hold Tight just might be encouraging the viewers with that title because it periodically becomes confusing. The through line, however, remains clear. Teenage Adam has disappeared after his best friend Igor died under mysterious circumstances. Adam’s mother Anna drives the narrative with her single-minded determination to find him.

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