Sundance teams with Poland's Transatlantyk Film Festival

The new sidebar, Sundance at Transatlantyk, will screen such films as Fishing Without Nets, The Green Prince, Watchers Of The Sky, 52 Tuesdays, Difret and A Most Wanted Man, and invite the films’ creators to meet with the audience for Q&As after the screenings.

Transatlantyk was founded in 2011 by the Oscar-wining musician and composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek as ¨a new artistic platform aimed at building a stronger relationship between society, art and the environment through music and movies¨ as well as inspiring discussion on social issues.

Another innovation is the introduction of the new section Cinema of the Third Age targetted at maturer audiences with screenings in early afternoon slots during the weekdays. Films selected for this first edition include Philomena, Gloria and Some Like It Hot.

Transatlantyk’s 2014 programme features a retrospective dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, a sidebar of B movies, a showcase of Culinary Cinema organised in collaboration with the Berlinale, a panorama of the best from the world’s international film festivals including Sacro GRA, The Notebook, Nothing Bad Can Happen, Omar and Club Sandwich.

In addition, Leszek Maslowski and Jakub Mróz of Poland’s only LGBT distributor Tongariro Releasing revealed to Screen Daily that the Teddy Award winner, The Way He Looks  by Brazil’s Daniel Ribeiro, will be one of the titles shown in Transatlantyk’s Cinema in Bed showcase.

Festival-goers can register for one of 60 double beds kitted out with screens to watch the film. on Poznan’s Freedom Square. More than two people are allowed to share a bed which have side-curtains for more discretion.

Poznan-based Tongariro, which will release The Way He Looks in Polish cinemas on August 29, had another of its forthcoming titles shown at New Horizons in Wroclaw this week: Panos H. Koutras’ Xenia was shown as part of the New Greek Cinema sidebar on the city’s Market Square on Sunday evening and at a sell-out screening this morning (Thursday).

The distributor’s line-up for the rest of 2014 include such films as Stefan Haupt’s award-winning The Circle, Bruce LaBruce’s Gerontophilia, Mischa Kamp’s Jongens, and Anne Zohra Berreched’s Zwei Mütter.

HBO boards Smarzowski project

HBO Poland will be a partner on one of its first fiction feature projects, Wojciech Smarzowski’s $4.8m (€ 3.6m) historical drama Volhynia which plans to begin shooting in Eastern Poland from mid-September.

At Polish Days’ pitchings on Thursday morning (July 31), producer Feliks Pastusiak of Warsaw-based Film IT said that the project is ¨almost fully financed¨ with backing from public broadcaster TVP, Orange, the Polish Film Institute and the Lublin region, among others

Smarzowski’s film about the value of remaining humane in difficult times focuses on the years of 1939-1945  in Poland’s former Eastern borderlands and the growing tension between Polish and Ukrainian neighbours, leading finally to the Volhynian massacre of summer 1943

Smarzowski’s last film, Traffic Department, was the top Polish release at the box office last year with more than 1 million admissions.

HBO Poland has also issued a letter of intent for Piotr Trzaskalski’s new feature, the $1.34m (€ 1m) The Wounded Beast to be produced by the Warsaw film and advertising agency ADHD and already has Witold Debicki and Weronika Rosati attached as members of the cast. Trzaskalski’s previous films include Edi and My Father’s Bike.

In addition, Roman Jarosz of Alter Ego Pictures presented Anna Jadowska’s Wild Roses, the company’s second feature project after producing Tomasz Wasilewski’s Floating Skyscrapers last year.

Jadowska wrote the  female lead with Floating Skyscrapers actress Marta Nieradkiewicz in mind and has internationally recognised cinematographer Jolanta Dylewska onboard as DoP. Shooting for the $ 1.07m (€ 800,000) project is planned for summer 2015.

The line-up of 11 projects also included pitches of new films by the Life Feels Good director Maciej Pieprzyca (I’m The Killer) and Julia Kolberger (Toxaemia).