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Co-directors Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross’ second feature In Bloom has continued its successful run of winning prizes by picking the Grand Prix at the 4th edition of the Vologda Independent Cinema From European Screens Festival (Voices).

The Georgian-German-French co-production, which premiered at the Berlinale in February and won the main prize at Wiesbaden’s goEast Festival in April, beat competition from such titles as Salvo, A Caretaker’s Tale and Berberian Sound Studio, to convince the International Jury headed by Hungarian film-maker Bela Tarr.

The top prize was even sweeter for Ekvtimishvili as it came on the same day as her birthday.

It was also the birthday of Polish actress Katarzyna Kwiatkowska who received the award for Best Actress for her tour de force performance in Maria Sadowska’s Women’s Day.

Sadowska told ScreenDaily that it was fitting that her lead actress should now receive what was her first prize for this film, since all of...

The seventh annual Austin Polish Film Festival starts tomorrow (11/1), and runs through Sunday. There are always plenty of wonderful films, discussions, Q&A sessions, posters and food, and this year will be no exception. All the fest's screenings and events will take place at The Marchesa Theatre in Lincoln Village.

Kicking off the festival's opening night is an (eventually) uplifting drama, Women's Day (Dzien kobiet), in which the Polish "solidarity" of the 1980s gains a feminist point-of-view in the 21st century. In the same vein as American cinematic characters Norma Rae, Karen Silkwood and Erin Brockovich, Halina Radwan reaches a point in her professional career where she won't "take it anymore."

What seems to be a great opportunity at first turns into a nightmare, as Halina is promoted from cashier to manager of a Butterfly grocery store, one in a nationwide chain of supermarkets in post-Communist Poland. As could be expected in any society,...

Around the middle of 2009 Romanian-British vampire comedy attracted a lot of attention in these parts thanks to its very old-world spin on the vampire mythos. It played well here in Toronto with an awful lot of people falling in love with it but there were also those who felt that it played the old-world part of the equation a little too strongly while the horror and comedy both lagged behind. Well, to those people, may I introduce upcoming Polish effort Kolysanka, or Lullabye.

Like Strigoi this is very clearly and Eastern European spin on the vampire mythos. But it also has a fantastic sense of absurdist humor, some fantastic slapstick gags - the vampire spin on a glory-hole is priceless - and a score that sounds as if it could have come from Danny Elfman. Yes, please. Check the trailer below!

In the mysterious circumstances inhabitants and visitors of some picturesque little town disappear.