After a Rotterdam (IFFR) premiere and further UK exposure through the Edinburgh Intl. Film Festival, the directing duo of Ewa Banaszkiewicz and Mateusz Dymek brought their feature debut My Friend the Polish Girl to Wrocław for Nowe Horyzonty. With experience in shorts and documentaries, the couple has graduated to a hybrid form of fiction filmmaking telling the story of a character (Katie, an American girl) who sets out to shoot a doc in the streets of post-Brexit London. She auditions themes first and people second, ultimately settling on Polish immigrant Alicja, who’s been living in the city for 12 years. Katie’s camera and perspective, and emojis and annotations, are the primary mode of expression detailing an increasingly complex dynamic between the two women.
I met Ewa and Mateusz on the top floor of the Kino Nowe Horyzonty, in between an intro and a q&a for their film, while their daughter made the best use of one of the few quiet moments in the cinema to run around the foyer.
A freelance film critic and programmer, Tommaso Tocci is based between Paris and Rome. He covers the European festival circuit and he's a member of FIPRESCI and the International Cinephile Society. His Top 3 for 2021: After Blue (Bertrand Mandico), Titane (Julia Ducournau), What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze).
