New Horizons Film Festival
Annual film festival held in Wroclaw, Poland From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Annual film festival held in Wroclaw, Poland From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
New Horizons Film Festival (pl: Nowe Horyzonty) is an international film festival held annually in July in Wrocław, Poland. It has been organised since 2001. It is one of the biggest and most popular film festivals in Poland. Since 2008 it is accredited by FIAPF with an "avant-garde" specialised competitive status.
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2011) |
The event is organized by Stowarzyszenie Nowe Horyzonty (New Horizons Association). The founder and moving spirit of the festival is Roman Gutek. The current director, Marcin Pieńkowski, took over the position in 2021. mBank is the nominal sponsor of the event since 2023.[1]
Festival presents mainly arthouse cinema. The most important from the several competitions held at the festival (including new Polish films, films-on-art and short films contests) is the "New horizons international competition". It aims to present bold, unconventional and uncompromising films that are searching for the new forms of expression – "the new horizons of cinema". Prizes in the competition are: the Grand Prix, special mentions, and Audience Award. Between 2010 and 2017 also a FIPRESCI Award was awarded.
Another important sections of the event are: retrospectives of the greatest film authors, experimental filmmakers and national cinemas, panorama of the most important auteur films of the season, "Midnight madness", and thematic sections.
After the first edition, organized in Sanok, the Festival was moved to Cieszyn, where it was held four times between 2002 and 2005. From 2006 the event takes place in Wrocław. Since then, it has apparently spread and now it is frequented by number of cinephiles and hosts many important guests every year, including Lisandro Alonso, Theo Angelopoulos, Šarūnas Bartas, Leos Carax, Nick Cave, Dardenne brothers, Lav Diaz, Bruno Dumont, Asghar Farhadi, Terry Gilliam, Amos Gitai, Peter Greenaway, Hal Hartley, Agnieszka Holland, Naomi Kawase, Abdellatif Kechiche, Kim Ki-duk, Andrey Konchalovskiy, Sebastián Lelio, Lou Ye, Dušan Makavejev, Tsai Ming-liang, Nanni Moretti, Cristian Mungiu, Gaspar Noé,[2] Ulrike Ottinger, Carlos Saura, Béla Tarr, Peter Tscherkassky, Agnès Varda, Andrzej Wajda, Vincent Ward, and Andrzej Żuławski.[3]
In 2016, when Wrocław was holding the title of European Capital of Culture, festival included events related to this occasion (i.e. a special section called Masters of European Cinema).
At the beginning the festival's Grand Prix was an audience award, but since 2009 it is given by the International Jury. The first main prize selected that way was awarded to Steve McQueen's Hunger.
| Year | Title | Director | Country | notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Paradox Lake | Przemysław Reut |  /  | chosen by audience |
| 2003 | Dolls | Takeshi Kitano |  | chosen by audience |
| 2004 | A Common Thread (Brodeuses) | Éléonore Faucher |  | chosen by audience |
| 2005 | Tarnation | Jonathan Caouette | | chosen by audience |
| 2006 | The Sacred Family (La sagrada familia) | Sebastián Lelio (as Sebastián Campos) |  | chosen by audience |
| 2007 | Potosi, le temps du voyage | Ron Havilio | /  | chosen by audience |
| 2008 | Rain of the Children | Vincent Ward |  | chosen by audience |
| 2009 | Hunger | Steve McQueen |  /  | the first Grand Prix chosen by International Jury |
| 2010 | Mundane History | Anocha Suwichakornpong |  | |
| 2011 | Attenberg | Athina Rachel Tsangari |  | |
| 2012 | Thursday Till Sunday | Dominga Sotomayor Castillo | /  | |
| 2013 | Celestial Wives of the Meadow Mari | Aleksei Fedorchenko |  | |
| 2014 | White Shadow | Noaz Deshe |  /  /  | |
| 2015 | Lucifer | Gust Van den Berghe |  | |
| 2016 | In the Last Days of the City | Tamer El Said |  / / /  | |
| 2017 | Western | Valeska Grisebach | /  /  | |
| 2018 | Holiday | Isabella Eklöf |  / /  | |
| 2019 | Bait | Mark Jenkin | | |
| 2020 | The Metamorphosis of Birds | Catarina Vasconcelos |  | event held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic |
| 2021 | Theo and the Metamorphosis | Damien Odoul | | |
| 2022 | See You Friday, Robinson | Mitra Farahani | /  /  /  | |
| 2023 | The Delinquents | Rodrigo Moreno |  /  / | |
| 2024 | Explanation for Everything | Gábor Reisz |  /  | |
Since the main prize became jury-selected in 2009, the Audience Award became a separate recognition, the second in importance. Three films managed to win both Grand Prix and Audience award: White Shadow in 2014, Bait in 2019 and The Metamorphosis of Birds in 2020.
| Year | Title | Director | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Oxygen | Ivan Vyrypaev | |
| 2010 | Le quattro volte | Michelangelo Frammartino | |
| 2011 | Brownian Movement | Nanouk Leopold | |
| 2012 | Donoma | Djinn Carrénard | |
| 2013 | Floating Skyscrapers | Tomasz Wasilewski | |
| 2014 | White Shadow | Noaz Deshe | / / |
| 2015 | Goodnight Mommy | Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz | |
| 2016 | All These Sleepless Nights | Michał Marczak | |
| 2017 | Photon | Norman Leto | |
| 2018 | An Elephant Sitting Still | Hu Bo |  |
| 2019 | Bait | Mark Jenkin | |
| 2020 | The Metamorphosis of Birds | Catarina Vasconcelos | |
| 2021 | Death of a Virgin and the Sin of Not Living | George Peter Barbari | |
| 2022 | 107 Mothers | Péter Kerekes | /  /  |
| 2023 | Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry | Elene Naveriani | /  |
| 2024 | Hoard | Luna Carmoon | |
23rd mBank New Horizons International Film Festival was held in Wrocław from 20 July to 30 2023. 251 films including 196 features and 55 shorts were screened.[4]
.jpg)
