Kraków Film Festival
The Krakow Film Festival (Polish: Krakowski Festiwal Filmowy) is one of Europe's oldest events dedicated to documentary, animation and other short film forms. It has been organised every year since 1961. The Artistic President of the festival is Krzysztof Gierat. It was in Kraków that Polish filmmakers such as Krzysztof Kieślowski, Wojciech Wiszniewski, Bogdan Dziworski, and Marcel Łoziński began their career. It was also here that the directors of animated films, including Ryszard Czekała, Jerzy Kucia, Julian Antonisz (Antoniszczak), Piotr Dumała, and Zbigniew Rybczyński, winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for the film Tango, made their debut. Yet, such renowned documentary and animated filmmakers were not the only ones to participate and win prizes in Kraków, for the international festival laureates included also numerous artists who made their names as feature film directors: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Werner Herzog, Zoltán Huszárik, Jaromil Jireš, Claude Lelouch, Patrice Leconte, Mike Leigh, and the recent Oscar laureate, Jan Svěrák. Since 1998, the Festival grants an international life achievement award called the "Dragon of Dragons". Its first laureate was Polish documentary maker Bohdan Kosiński. 1998 – Bohdan Kosiński 1999 – Jan Lenica 2000 – Raymond Depardon 2001 – Jan Švankmajer 2002 – Werner Herzog 2003 – Stephen i Timothy Quay 2004 – Albert Maysles 2005 – Yuri Norstein 2006 – Kazimierz Karabasz 2007 – Raoul Servais 2008 – Allan King 2009 – Jerzy Kucia 2010 – Jonas Mekas 2011 – Piotr Kamler 2012 – Helena Třeštíková 2013 – Paul Driessen 2014 – Bogdan Dziworski 2015 – Priit Pärn 2016 – Marcel Łoziński 2017 – Witold Giersz and Daniel Szczechura 2018 – Sergei Loznitsa 2019 – Caroline Leaf 2020 – Péter Forgács 2021 – Piotr Dumała 2022 – Jarmo Jääskeläinen 2023 – Michael Dudok de Wit 2024 – Jacek Petrycki 2024 – Godfrey Reggio The unique character of the Krakow Film Festival derives not only from the programme of the competition screenings, the Dragon and Hobby Horse prizes awarded by an international and Polish jury, the Prix UIP Kracow, the FIPRESCI, and the FICC awards or numerous other prizes granted outside festival regulations, but also from the programme of accompanying events. Cinema of Poland International Festival of Independent Cinema Off Plus Camera held in Kraków The Krakow Film Festival Official website