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Glitter (Brokat) is a series starring Magdalena Poplawska and Wiktoria Filus. It is directed by Anna Kazejak, Julia Kolberger, Marek Lechki and Rafal Skalski.

Ten 30 minute episodes that stand out for the well elaborated retro aesthetics.

The year is 1976, in Sopot (Poland), three resolute women face the social and political norms and customs in pursuit of their independence and freedom – financially, sexually and romantically.

About the Series

Through the multiple narratives, the characters in the series offer us a portrait of life in Poland in the 1970’s where the traditional culture meets new trends.

This unavoidably covers the taboo subject this series seemingly revolves around: sex. Also a means to land well paid jobs.

A depiction of an era that counts on a very elaborate production and is well worth watching, particularly, for its good reconstruction of an epoch and the good atmospherics. With good photography, scenography, and performances.

A...

Delivery by Christmas (Jeszcze przed swietami) is a comedy movie starring Monika Frajczyk and directed by Aleksandra Kulakowska and Maciej Prykowski.

A comedy that fuses social realism with the Christmas spirit, in this story of a corporate mix-up.

Premise

Marysia’s career as a courier is on line as a spiteful coworker sabotages her deliveries. Thankfully, a helpful customer comes to the rescue.

Movie Review

Very paced and different to the customary Christmas numbers we are used to see. A genuinely Polish, European movie that distances itself from Hollywood, as you will see in the characterizations, which are more realistic and natural. But, that does not stand in the way for the “magic” that is so characteristic of Christmas rom-coms.

With some deadpan schticks pulled off by good performers it lightens the mood of the film. A comedy that pokes fun at everything quotidian.

This is not a formulaic Christmas movie,...

"Maciej, we have to finish what we started." Netflix has debuted the full-length official trailer for a Polish mountain climbing thriller titled Broad Peak, from filmmaker Leszek Dawid. This one will be streaming on Netflix in September for those interested. Broad Peak is based on the true events of Maciej Berbeka - the legendary Polish mountaineer, member of the Ice Warriors group, who wanted to reach the top of one of the most dangerous mountains. When it comes to fighting for honor, price doesn't matter. Berbeka returns to one of the most dangerous mountains in the world, Broad Peak on the Pakistan border (see Google Maps), to clear his name. Returning to the dangerous Karakoram mountain range comes with hard decisions that will forever change his life. Starring Ireneusz Czop as Maciej, Maja Ostaszewska, Dawid Ogrodnik, Marcin Czarnik, & Lukasz Simlat. I'm all in for this! Very strange choice of a pop song for the trailer,...

Spoiler Alert: Do not read if you intend to watch the film.

Berlinale Silver Bear winner Tomasz Wasilewski isn’t afraid of the subject of his latest film “Fools,” even though he focuses on an incestuous relationship between a mother and a son, played by Dorota Kolak and Łukasz Simlat.

“It was never my intention to shock anyone. I just wanted to tell the story of the hardest love of all,” the Polish director tells Variety.

“Fools,” produced by Extreme Emotions and lensed by Romanian Dp Oleg Mutu, is set to premiere in Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s new section Proxima. New Europe Film Sales is handling the sales.

“I was wondering what would happen if someone close to me came to me now, saying they were in a similar relationship. I guess, and I can only guess, that at this point in my life, it wouldn’t be a problem,...

Polish filmmaker’s latest work world premieres at Karlovy Vary.

Fools is the latest feature from Polish filmmaker Tomasz Wasilewski whose previous films include Floating Skyscrapers and United States Of Love, which won the Silver Bear for best script at the 2016 Berlinale.

Fools is debuting in the Proxima competition at Karlovy Vary, and centres around a couple, played by Dorota Kolak and Lukasz Simlat, who live a contentedly secluded lifestyle in a house by the coast. But when the woman brings her sick son to come and live with them, the façade of their relationship begins to crumble around them...

Tomasz Wasilewski’s “Fools” (Głupcy) has debuted its trailer ahead of its world premiere at Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Proxima Competition. World sales are being handled by Jan Naszewski’s New Europe Film Sales.

Wasilewski won the best script award for “United States of Love” at the Berlin Film Festival in 2016, and the East of West Award at Karlovy Vary in 2013 for “Floating Skyscrapers.”

“Fools” follows Marlena and Tomasz, hidden away from the world in a small seaside town, who have been in a happy relationship for many years. Their intricately woven everyday life slowly begins to unravel when, against Tomasz’s wishes, Marlena allows her sick son to move in with them. As the past comes back to them in full force they will have to redefine their love, choices and life.

Karlovy Vary’s Lenka Tyrpáková commented: “After the triumph of his previous film ‘United States of Love,...

Never Gonna Snow Again (?niegu ju? nigdy nie b?dzie) Kino Lorber Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Malgorzata Szumowska. Co-director: Michal Englert Writer: Michal Englert, Malgorzata Szumowska Cast: Alec Utgoff, Maja Ostaszewska, Agata Kulesza Weronika Rosati, Katarzyna Figura,Andrzej Chyra, Lukasz Simlat Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 7/16/21 Opens: […]

The post Never Gonna Show Again Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

French distributor Arp has acquired the rights to “Fools,” an upcoming drama by Berlinale Silver Bear winner Tomasz Wasilewski (“United States of Love”). Jan Naszewski’s Warsaw-based sales outlet New Europe Film Sales brokered the deal.

“Fools” is the story of Marlena and Tomasz, who are hidden away from the world in a small seaside town and have been in a happy relationship for many years. But when Marlena allows her son to move in with them against Tomasz’s will, the past comes back to haunt them, and their intricately woven everyday life slowly begins to come apart.

“We were extremely impressed by the powerful way the director brings us along with him on such a powerful journey,” said Arp’s Michele Halberstadt. “The film is beautifully composed, and the lead actress is just mesmerizing. It is the kind of film that commands you to watch it. Tough at times,...

Fools

Poland’s Tomasz Wasilewski should be ready with his fourth feature Fools in 2021, a Polish-German-Romanian co-production produced by Ewa Puszczyńska and Ada Solomon. Dorota Kolak and Lukasz Simlat star in the lead roles, while New Romanian Wave stalwart Oleg Muntu serves as cinematographer. Katarzyna Herman, who starred in the director’s first two features is also in the cast.…...

How much healing can a good massage provide? A fast-fading hour or so of relaxation, or a more sustained sense of general well-being and peace with the world, so long as it’s topped up with repeat appointments? In “Never Gonna Snow Again,” a searching, cryptic satire of bourgeois insularity in modern Poland, the magic hands of an immigrant Ukrainian masseur are tasked with easing a litany of woes, from middle-class guilt to climate change anxiety to terminal cancer — though no one thinks to ask him about his own interior aches and pains. After last year’s moody but mildly received English-language diversion “The Other Lamb,” prolific Polish auteur Malgorzata Szumowska returns to home turf in this Venice competition entry, and the result is her most compelling and hauntingly realized film to date.

With a run of variously provocative, distinctively styled films through the 2010s — including the Juliette Binoche starrer...

What makes a priest a priest? Technically, the answer is devotion to God, completion of seminary training, and ordination by a bishop to deacon status — all this must happen before one can wear the collar. But Jan Komasa’s stunning, quietly subversive “Corpus Christi” sees the question in more existential terms, permitting a well-meaning juvenile delinquent to skip all that spiritual preparation and to con a small Polish community into accepting him as a kind of proxy while the parish’s regular priest sobers up. The result makes for .

With his tortured energy and intense, ice-on-fire eyes, this mysterious interloper is earnest, not unhandsome, and surprisingly effective in his unconventional methods, and the serious-minded movie’s sympathy is unambiguously in his corner, even if what he’s doing is immediate grounds for excommunication. Inspired by real events, the film dramatizes what turns out to be a fairly common occurrence in contemporary Poland: Evidently,...

Corpus Christi (Boże Ciało) director Jan Komasa: "I was looking for a moment in the film that sort of detaches from just storytelling.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

During dinner at Il Gattopardo across the street from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Corpus Christi (Boze Cialo) director Jan Komasa told me that he is a “big fan” of Andrey Zvyagintsev and his films Loveless and Leviathan. Jan’s composers Evgueni Galperine and Sacha Galperine also scored François Ozon's By The Grace Of God and Barry Levinson’s The Wizard Of Lies, starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer with Alessandro Nivola on the Bernie Madoff scandal.

Jan Komasa on Bartosz Bielenia: “In Warsaw now he is part of Krzysztof Warlikowski, very renowned European theatre director - he is part of his troupe.”

Corpus Christi, screenplay by Mateusz Pacewicz, stars Bartosz Bielenia (from Krzysztof Warlikowski’s theatre troupe) with Eliza Rycembel,...

Faith is inherently about putting your complete trust in something or someone without knowing whether the object deserves such blind allegiance. We have faith in God because believing there’s purpose to atrocities is easier than accepting a nihilistic outlook on life just like the presence of miracles proves good fortune is earned so you won’t feel guilty upon realizing how you have it better than someone else. It’s therefore impossible not to let it warp your morality until everything possesses the need for black and white clarity. Kids in juvenile lock-up are scum without exception. A reformed drunk hits and kills six kids in an automobile collision and he must be to blame. The mayor profits from his government connections, but that’s merely payment for serving the town.

Labels of good and evil are thus meticulously and often unjustly placed upon actions and events without the...

Jan Naszewski’s Warsaw-based sales outlet New Europe Film Sales has picked up world sales rights for the upcoming drama “Fools,” by Berlinale Silver Bear winner Tomasz Wasilewski (“United States of Love”), produced by Ewa Puszczynska, the producer behind Pawel Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winner “Ida” and nominee “Cold War.”

Leading Polish actors Dorota Kolak and Lukasz Simlat star in a film about the difficult relationship between a mother and son, and how their choices have dramatic consequences.

Puszczynska is producing for her company Extreme Emotions, in co-production with Ada Solomon at Romania’s Hi-Film and Jamila Wenske of Germany’s One Two Films, and in association with Nem Corp. Romanian DoP Oleg Mutu returns after his previous collaboration with Wasilewski on “United States of Love,” which New Europe sold to over 30 territories.

New Europe’s Cannes line-up includes the Critics’ Week selection “A White, White Day,” by Hlynur Palmason, which sold...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Agnieszka Smoczyńska's Fugue (2018), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from April 12 – May 11, 2019 in Mubi's The New Auteurs strand.Most people would empathize with a woman who lost her memory, but what if she preferred not to regain it? Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s second feature, Fugue,is a pronounced psychological exploration of trauma and personal choice of what not to be. Intertwined with dreams and fantasy sequences, the film reinvents the notion of (female) agency with the freedom of merging worlds, similar to the etherealness of Fugue’s genre-bending predecessor, The Lure (2016). In her astonishing debut, Smoczyńska weaved a universe of myth and social reality by presenting man-eating mermaids and their institutional bind to a performance cabaret. This time around, her sophomore feature is more self-contained and introspective, while eluding simple psychological diagnosis. The story...

Arriving in the wake of her beloved goth mermaid extravaganza, “The Lure,” Agnieszka Smoczynska’s disappointingly unadventurous second feature begins much the same way as her first. A mysterious woman surfaces from the underground darkness of modern Poland, grabbing our attention as she stumbles into society. But where the twin sirens in Smoczynska’s debut emerged from a fairy tale, the lost and confused heroine of “Fugue” materializes from the shadows of an unaccountable two-year absence. Her name — she thinks — is Alicja (screenwriter Gabriela Muskala), and the camera follows her as she walks out of a Warsaw subway tunnel in an atomic blonde trench coat, climbs onto the busy platform, and casually pees all over the floor.

Memory loss is one of the oldest plot devices in the world, which makes it ripe for some kind of reinvention. The opening minutes of “Fugue” not only suggest that we’re in...

Blue Jasmine | Prisoners | Greedy Lying Bastards | Mister John | Hannah Arendt | Runner Runner | It's A Lot | Girl Most Likely | Smash & Grab: The Story Of The Pink Panther | Austenland

Blue Jasmine (12A)

(Woody Allen, 2013, Us) Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Peter Sarsgaard. 98 mins

In the downward trajectory of late-era Allen comes a startling spike to remind us how great he still can be, especially when it comes to women's roles. This show belongs to Blanchett, playing a Manhattan one-percenter brought down to earth. Propped up by alcohol, drugs and her sister, she's an accident that's already happening, and a magnificent, tragicomic creation.

Prisoners (15)

(Denis Villeneuve, 2013, Us) Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Paul Dano. 153 mins

A kidnapping case refuses to crack in this weighty, slippery whodunit.

Greedy Lying Bastards (12A)

(Craig Scott Rosebraugh, 2012, Us) 90 mins

Climate-change deniers get a dose of their own medicine, as this impassioned doc lays out a history of hypocrisy.

Mister John (15)

(Christine Molloy,...

★★★☆☆ Catholicism and homosexuality is hardly a taboo partnership in modern Western cinema, but it is subject matter that retains the potential to be incendiary if mishandled. Thankfully, director Malgorzata Szumowska approaches the topic with apposite sensitivity in new film In the Name Of (2013), in UK cinemas this week through Peccadillo Pictures. Andrzej Chyra takes centre stage as a priest desperately trying to reconcile his faith and sexuality, whilst also acting as shepherd to a troubled flock. Yet, though the themes and performances combine to great effect, it remains hampered by a rough-edged, desultory narrative.

It's a dry, hot summer in a Polish backwater and Father Adam (Chyra) is the likeable head of a reformatory hostel for delinquent teenagers, along with his stern colleague Michal (Lukasz Simlat). Working days are spent on manual labour whilst the pair try to impart a sense of discipline and camaraderie through evening football matches. A...