Today, at the Gdynia City Museum, we officially opened our Film Market.
Guests were welcomed by Arkadiusz Golębiewski – director of the NNW Festival, and Slawomir Ciok, who gave a few words of introduction and invited everyone to participate in the upcoming panels. Golębiewski stressed that the Market’s priority is to build a network of international relationships and, through this, to enable Eastern European filmmakers to reach audiences outside their own countries. Our initiative will allow directors, producers, and distributors from all over the world and from every industry segment to work together and that the results will be more interesting works.
#Panel Bringing the tiny country’s national history to the screen: Siberia in Bones
Depicting a nation’s history, let alone a national trauma is challenging. It was taken up by our special guest Virgiliu Margineanu – producer of Siberia in the Bones.
The Moldovan filmmaker aimed to adequately promote the film to arouse the interest of younger audiences. Exile is the central theme of his production, so it was all the more interesting for other participants in the debate, since their homelands share similar stories.
National trauma is passed from generation to generation, and even unconsciously. Producer Margineanu also pointed out another problem. We are talking about working with older people directly affected by the trauma. National trauma can be a taboo subject for the older people. That’s why, according to Virgiliu Margineanu, filmmakers should prepare adequately for this type of conversation.
#Panel How to fascinate the audience with a film biography and how to conquer the world with it
Viewers primarily look to other people’s biographies to reflect their own experiences and emotions, so the role of the director is to give an individual story a bit of a universal dimension, Massimo Benvegnu said.
Special guest Massimo Benvegnu, director of the Bologna Biografilm Festival, and directors, producers and distributors of documentaries held a conversation on film biographies. Benvegnu pointed out that it took time to understand that documentaries are not just television productions on the verge of journalism but full-fledged film works.
The directors talked about their films, which they are presenting at this year’s festival.
Konrad Sosnowski, who deals with film distribution, added valuable remarks on the impact of streaming platforms on changing audience tastes – today’s viewers are interested in visually appealing documentaries with a dynamic narrative form.
#Panel PISF incentives – what are the in the film production financing system in Poland
As we know, finding funds for film production is one of the biggest challenges for producers. The answer to this is subsidies, which provide excellent support But must be within the limits of European Union law.
In addition to the subsidies that can be used after the enactment of the 2005 law on cinematography, there are also so-called incentives for audiovisual production, which were introduced by a separate law in 2019.
The road from submitting an application to a grant does not have to be complicated and long… Paulina Malinowska Czech of the Polish Film Institute explained how to go through the meanders of the Polish film financing system. Our guest speaker – who already has 18 years of experience in the film industry – explained to the participants the Polish subsidy system, Visual works realized in Poland since 2019 can count on support from PISF in the amount of 30% of Polish qualified costs.
According to Paulina Malinowska-Czech: the amount can be as high as 15 million zlotys. This is an option that foreign filmmakers can also use after meeting the relevant requirements. So far, we know that these funds have been used by, among others, Chłopi – our Polish candidate for an Oscar. We also learned about seeking funds for production in the US and Japan.
