The city’s rich cinematic scene gets another welcome shot in the arm with the return of the Polish Film Festival to Sydney on October 25. Bringing central Europe’s finest to the Palace Norton Street in Leichhardt, it opens with Dariusz Gajewski’s epic historical The Legions.
This blockbuster went gangbusters at home, depicting a fraught love triangle played out against the country’s valiant battle for independence from the clutches of Tsarist Russia. They don’t make ‘em like they used to, so the saying goes, but this mighty battle for freedom, and for love, proves that’s just not true.
There’s another three-way tussle at the heart of Monika Jordan-Młodzianowska’s The Iron Bridge. Set in a Silesian mining community, it’s an affair to remember that descends into a rescue drama that sets the stakes impossibly high. If murder mysteries are more your thing, check out gripping Servants of War.
Fresh from debuting at the San Sebastian Film Festival, The Taste of Pho will work up an appetite. Directed by Japan-born, Poland-based Mariko Bobrik, it relays the story of a widowed Vietnamese cook living in Warsaw who feels out of place, even as his ten-year-old daughter embraces the city as her own. If the family vibe appeals, also check out The Day of Chocolate, an adaptation of a kids’ book that pits Monika and Dawid against all sorts of unusual creatures and a memory-stealing wicked witch.
You can catch Hollywood stars John Malkovich and Josh Harnett alongside 2001; A Space Odyssey astronaut Keir Dullea in celebrated Polish director Lech Majewski’s trippy, time-hopping Valley of the Gods. Filmed across America and Poland, it relays a battle between Malkovich’s greedy trillionaire and the First Nations Navajo over mining holy land, stretching from the past to the far future in a head-spinning way likened to David Lynch.
Jazz comes to vibrant life in Icarus. The Legend Of Mietek Kosz. A biopic of the blind piano prodigy, here played by Dawid Ogrodnik, it’s a toe-tapper. Then closing night brings more bio brilliance with Charlatan, directed by three-time Oscar-nominated Agnieszka Holland. It relays the story of Jan Mikolášek, a herbal healer so sought after that word of his skills brings both the Nazis and the Communist party to his door. But what price is exacted by the protection they offer?
You can check out the full program and book tickets here, and treat yourself to post-movie pierogi at the Polish Club a short drive away in Ashfield.
Love movies al fresco? Moonlight Cinema is returning to Centennial Park.
