This year's 34th edition of the festival took place from October 12 through 21, with Amos Gitaï officially opening the festivities with a screening of A Tramway in Jerusalem. And French director Denis Parrot received the Free Spirit Grand Prize for his documentary Out, dealing with the difficulties of coming out.
A total of 24 French feature films and 5 shorts have been shown at the 2018 Warsaw Film Festival, including Paul Sanchez is Back! in the International Competition, Le Grand Bal in the Documentary Competition, and Close Enemies and K contraire (L'Enkas) in the Discoveries section.
David Oelhoffen (Close Enemies), Denis Parrot (Out), Patricia Mazuy (Paul Sanchez is Back!), and Marc Fouchard (Break, in the 1-2 Competition) completed the French delegation who took part in the event.
All of the French feature films selected at the festival can be found here.
The complete festival program can be found here.
The WFF (Warsaw Film Festival) was founded in 1986, and seeks to give prominence to Polish cinema while also celebrating first and second films by international directors.
2018 has not yet come to an end, but we can nevertheless provide an overview of the economic vitality of the Polish market at this time.
Although not matching up to the successful results of French films in 2017 (3.01 million admissions registered for 62 new French films), we can applaud the performance of the 48 new titles released in Poland in the first three quarters of 2018, which garnered 1.13 million spectators. While Poland clearly remains the second most important market for French films in Central and Eastern Europe, if we consider results of the first nine months of the year, there is only a difference of 100,000 spectators separating the results in Russia and Poland—two vastly different markets, considering that in 2017, 213.5 million admissions were registered in Russia and 56.59 million in Poland. The excellent results so far this year can be credited notably to Belle and Sebastian, Friends for Life and White Fang. And the year is not over yet!
