About LFF 2024

Lublin Film Festival will be held for the 18th time on 22-30 November 2024

About LFF 2023:

Lublin Film Festival is an event for every person who is interested in the world, looking for a unique, artistic experience, something new and moving, as well as wants to look at the future of cinema together with others. It is also an opportunity to spend valuable time, meet unique artists and have fun in an open, friendly atmosphere.

The motto of this year’s edition is community. We believe that we can develop our surroundings through cooperation. For us, cinema is a meeting space and an opportunity to look at the world from many perspectives. Professing universal values helps to oppose evil and dialogue leads to building a community strengthened by mutual understanding.

Nearly 160 films from 40 different countries will be presented in 9 competitions, 17 thematic shows and a series of special screenings. There will be live-action films, documentaries, animations and experimental films, including well-known titles awarded at global festivals, as well as those that have not yet been shown in Poland (93 premieres!).

Short films

As always, there will be plenty of variety in the short film competitions. Among others, the following titles will compete for the Golden Anteater statuettes: two big documentaries – “Moody” by Karolina Karwan and Tomasz Ratter and “The Rocking Horses” by Marcin Lesisz. The animation competition will feature, for example: “Slow Light” by the Kijek/Adamski duo and “Crab” by Piotr Chmielewski. Other short films titles will include: “Fairplay” by Zoel Aeschbacher, who has already been awarded at the LFF, “A Beautiful Wildflower Meadow” by Emi Buchwald with a sensational performance by Andrzej Kłak, “Cherries”, a film shown in Cannes by Vytautas Katkus, and awarded in Locarno “The Big Bang” by Carlos Segunda. The following films will have their world premieres: the Romanian drama “Wait Two Days” by Jaro Minne, the Ukrainian documentary “A Place of Peace” by Antonina Gotfrid, and the Brazilian comedy “A Mother’s Daughter” directed by Isabel Cavalcanti that will be shown in Europe for the first time.

Winter Blues

Wild Young Boar

A Childless Village

Bread and Salt

Roving Woman

Klondike

Mountain Onion

The First Two

The Exam

Focus: Storytelling and special screenings

We have expanded the formula of the feature film competition, which from this year is called Focus: Storytelling. It will include feature films with a duration of at least 40 minutes. You will see awarded at Venice “Bread and Salt” by Damian Kocur, the Ukrainian “Klondike”, the Sundance festival sensation, directed by Maryna Er Gorbach, a film appreciated by the journalists at the festival in Koszalin titled “Roving Woman” by Michał Chmielewski, the FIPRESCI prize winner at the Karlovy Vary festival, the German-Iraqi “The Exam” by Shawkat Amin Korki, and the Kazakh “Mountain Onion” directed by Eldar Shibanov. The Spanish “Wild Young Boar” by Miguel Sánchez Garcia will have its international premiere, and for the first time in Poland we will show the Hungarian “The First Two” by Balázs Szövényi-Lux, the Iranian film “A Childless Village” by Reza Jamali and the Georgian “Winter Blues” directed by Taz Narimanidze.

The festival will also be an opportunity to get acquainted with the cinema classics. As part of the new Versus series, we will compare different film adaptations of “Revenge” by Aleksander Fredro. We will also zoom in on the figure of one of the most controversial Polish filmmakers, Walerian Borowczyk, who would celebrate his 100th birthday this year. Piotr Kardas will show us the less known face of the director and Kuba Mikurda will talk about his work on the documentary titled “Love Express. The disappearance of Walerian Borowczyk.”

Workshops

We would like to invite children to the Invisible Animals eco-workshops, led by the Slovak artist Mária Bačová, as well as whole families to the classes with Justyna Czarnota combined with screenings from the Focus: Children competition.

Lublin Media Meetings

Due to Lublin being titled as the European Youth Capital, local film events organisers will meet to talk about the future of their activities and the implementation of new solutions for this year.

Accompanying events

The organisers have also prepared additional attractions for various age groups. Families with children will be able to have fun at a film disco. The winners of the youth rules competition, Anna Kaczorek, Natalia Matyjaszczyk and Klaudia Milczek, would like to invite you to Psychegraphico, a screening of the film “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” by Martin McDonagh combined with film therapy activities. The newly created theatre improvisation group, Oł Maj Gad, will take the stage and improvise to a surprise film. Traditionally, there will also be a film quiz.

The winners of this year’s festival will be selected by a jury composed of: Mateusz Demski, Grzegorz Jaroszuk and Magdalena Wleklik. The Lublin audience will also choose their favourite film.