Film festival

The All About Freedom Festival film award still has a chance to become one of the most important cultural showcases of Gdańsk and film Poland on the international stage. The introduction of an official competition has elevated the festival to a higher artistic level, attracting the most important works from global festivals and their creators to Gdańsk. Programming a film festival that deals with contemporary dimensions of freedom is an agreement to take on responsibility and readiness for criticism from all sides of the cultural and political scene. By definition, after all, a discussion about freedom can only take place when its various dimensions, sometimes contradictory visions, and divergent perspectives are shown. The discussion on freedom conducted through the medium of film must be open to different experiences. Such a discussion and confrontation is therefore a lesson in democracy through art.

The festival audience forms a community of seekers and brave individuals. These are viewers who do not come to the cinema for easy entertainment. They want film images to provoke them to think, provide an impetus for seeking new meanings, and force them to confront their own views with what is happening in Poland and the world. Discussions after screenings at the ECS have become as important as the films themselves. It is during these meetings that we have repeatedly asked questions crucial to the identity of Gdańsk and Poland: in the name of freedom from problems, can we forget about solidarity and decide that those in need are no longer our concern? Does a common good that must be cared for still exist? In 2022, Poles once again showed the world what solidarity is by welcoming Ukrainians fleeing the war into their homes. Today, four years later, the situation has reversed: a narrowly understood national interest is increasingly placed above the demand for international solidarity.

The first laureate of the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk Award in 2016 was Cristian Mungiu for the film „Graduation”. Now, exactly ten years later, the two-time Cannes Palme d'Or winner returns to AAFF with the film „Fjord”. Alongside Mungiu, other giants of cinema have been our laureates: Ken Loach and his „I, Daniel Blake” (Audience Award 2016), or Robin Campillo, whose „120 Beats Per Minute” (Mayor of the City of Gdańsk Award 2017) is a furious and passionate story about the fight for the right to life and dignity of people struggling with the HIV epidemic in pre-internet Paris.

Sergey Dvortsevoy (recipient of the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk Award for the film „Ayka” in 2018) and Sergei Loznitsa are internationally acclaimed filmmakers from the post-Soviet space. The presence of these masters made us realize how deeply the struggle for freedom is rooted in the painful history of our part of Europe. From the beginning, I built the AAFF film program as a fully inclusive space—diversity is the norm here, which is why the great victories of female directors were not something exceptional: Teona Strugar Mitevska was honored in 2019 with the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk Award for the film „God Exists, Her Name Is Petrunya,” and in 2023, Anna Hints mesmerized us with her documentary „Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” showing the cleansing power of female solidarity.

Freedom has no single latitude, which is why we ensured that the AAFF program extended far beyond Europe's borders, offering diverse cultural perspectives. In 2013, the visit of Jia Zhangke, one of the most outstanding directors of contemporary Chinese cinema, was a milestone and a great, unforgettable honor. The filmmaker came to us with his exceptional, Cannes-awarded film „A Touch of Sin”—a staggering and brutal study of individual frustration colliding with predatory capitalism and oppression. Meanwhile, „Monos,” directed by Alejandro Landes, a mesmerizing Colombian masterpiece, confronted us with the dark, primal side of freedom. The story of teenage guerrillas operating in the jungle became a universal metaphor for freedom without borders, which without a moral compass inevitably gives rise to anarchy and violence. Another proud chapter in the history of the festival's programming is our intuition in recognizing great talent and presenting the debuts of creators who later triumphed in cinema. I will mention here the Canadian Xavier Dolan, the wunderkind of cinema, for whom we organized a mini-retrospective as early as 2014. At that time, we showcased the director's passionate, revolutionary cinematic language, which, like no one else's, was able to tell the story of youthful rebellion and freedom of identity. Before Swedish director Ruben Östlund won two Palmes d'Or, the Gdańsk audience could watch his groundbreaking, provocative films „Play” and „Force Majeure” at our venue, which deconstructed, often with humor, perceptions of how freedom is experienced in developed countries. During the AAFF, we also showed the mesmerizing debut of Brady Corbet, „The Childhood of a Leader,” which heralded the arrival of one of the most interesting visionaries of contemporary American cinema.

The festival is also a platform for bold Polish cinema that uncompromisingly examines freedom from the perspective of our country and universal values. For us, Agnieszka Holland is an ethical compass: the outstanding, deeply empathetic cinema of moral anxiety that she creates has regularly sparked the most important festival debates. The screening of her latest work—the acclaimed „Franz Kafka,” our opening film last year—and screenings of her earlier pictures („In Darkness,” „Green Border”) are absolute milestones of the festival. Meetings with the director in the ECS auditorium have permanently etched themselves into the memory of the Gdańsk audience. In the context of Polish cinema masters, we cannot, of course, forget the legacy of Andrzej Wajda, who is a constant inspiration for the festival. His fate was inextricably linked with Gdańsk and the Solidarity movement. Presenting the director's archives and returning to works such as „Man of Iron” served as a reminder of the historical contribution of Polish cinema to the fight for democracy. The festival screens have featured films by domestic creators of the young and middle generations, including Tomasz Wasilewski, Jan P. Matuszyński, Kamila Tarabura, and Olga Chajdas. They presented intimate, identity-bold cinema exploring the boundaries of personal sovereignty in the modern world.

After 20 years of the All About Freedom Festival, one conclusion is inevitable: the AAFF film program will always remain unfinished and open to further dimensions of freedom. After all, new facets of it are constantly revealing themselves, driven by technological development, economic conditions, or—so painfully relevant today—climate change. As long as the world transforms and films are made, our mission of searching for and redefining freedom on the screen remains endless.