Wellington Polish Film Festival 2016

MEDIA RELEASE

16 September 2016

11 Minutes

Wellington Polish Film Festival Full Programme and Ticketing Online

The Wellington Polish Film Festival runs for ten days starting on Friday 30 September until Sunday 9 October.

The film programme and tickets for New Zealand’s first Wellington Polish Film Festival 2016 is now live on the WPFF website. Tickets can be bought online through our website and at Paramount.

Wanda Lepionka, the Festival Director, said the Opening Night Gala Screening will be a historic first for New Zealand.

“I’m really looking forward when we open in two weeks, as this marks the start of the first ever Polish Film Festival in New Zealand. We have 37 films in our inaugural programme including 15 contemporary award-winning features and documentaries as well as shorts. It'll be a week-long celebration of Polish film."

Wanda said she’s delighted to partner with world renowned Łódz Film School, one of the top 15 international film schools, presenting work from well-known Polish film masters and emerging filmmaker talent.

Particularly important to this year is that 2016 is the Year of Krzysztof Kieślowski in Poland, marking the 20th anniversary of the influential and prolific Polish Director’s death. WPFF will be screening newly restored prints of his Three Colours Trilogy: White, the lesser known but grittiest of the three trilogy films, and his mesmerising The Double Life of Veronique. In addition there will be a chance for festival-goers to see several experimental shorts made during his time as a student at Łódz Film School.

The Opening Night Gala Screening will kick-start the Festival with Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement and award-winning auteur director, Jerzy Skolimowski’s thriller film 11 Minutes. The multi-stranded thriller tells the story of the lives of several Varsovians who in the space of eleven minutes, discover the impossibility of escaping one’s fate.

The Festival will close with Kieślowski’s classic masterpiece and international breakthrough film, The Double Life of Veronique, two parallel stories about two identical women; one living in Poland the other in France, unknown to each other but sharing an emotional bond. Starring acclaimed actress Irène Jacob, with the magical cinematography of Sławomir Idziak and Zbigniew Preisner’s haunting score, The Double Life of Veronique will be a film to fall in love with and to close the Wellington Polish Film Festival for another year.

END

About Wanda Lepionka:

Wanda Lepionka is the daughter of Polish child refugees who in World War II survived Siberian labour camps and were welcomed into New Zealand. Wanda, a Wellington filmmaker, has spent a year working on the inaugural Wellington Polish Film Festival. She co-owns CraftInc. Films Ltd with partner David Strong. She’s produced two shorts that David wrote and directed: Pacific Dreams (2011) and Afghanistan-set The Last Night (2014), which was selected for film festivals around the world.

Film festival supporters include:

Principal Partner:

Embassy of the Republic of Poland in New Zealand
http://wellington.msz.gov.pl/en/

Our Partners:

Wellington City Council
http://wellington.govt.nz/

Paramount
http://www.paramount.co.nz/

Crowe Horwath
http://www.crowehorwath.net/nz/

Polish Association in NZ
http://www.polishcommunity.org.nz/

NZ Embassy in Warsaw
https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/countries-and-regions/europe/poland/new-zealand-embassy/

Polish Film Institute
http://www.pisf.pl/

Krakow Film Foundation
http://www.kff.com.pl/fundacja/en/

Lodz Film School
https://www.filmschool.lodz.pl/en/

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