Cinematographers’ Debuts Competition was initiated in 2010 due to the Festival’s increasing openness to the noteworthy artists and the new film phenomena they create. The selection committee nominates first or second non-documentary feature films made by young directors and cinematographers. The idea of creating additional competition sections was a natural consequence of our previous activities. For years we have been promoting innovative projects that combine intellectual freedom, remarkable insight into world affairs and a desire to inspire other artists of the screen.
Cinematographers’ Debuts Competition brings new discoveries: great movies of high artistic value and great filmmakers whose new ventures surprise not only the Jury members but all audiences around the world as well.
Competition is under the patronage of Polish Filmmakers Association.
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ANNULAR ECLIPSE
What is human identity made of if not the ever-expanding collection of memories of the things done, told and thought of; how a person loved, dreamt, despaired, and reacted to the failures of everyday life? Would people be who they seem to be without those snippets of the past that tell them who they are, or could they create themselves from scratch time and again? Our bodies also have a memory of sorts, but can they really function independently from our minds? And what if there was a technology that enabled injecting a body with someone else’s memories? In the near future, in 2030’s China, two assassins, Ge and Song, use their time to kill various targets sent to them by a mysterious organization. Ge, however, has not been himself lately. At night he is tormented by surreal nightmares, at day he experiences dreamlike visions – to the extent that he begins to question his identity. Could he be a product of the latest technology that had eliminated Alzheimer by allowing people to enter others’ minds? Quite unexpectedly, during one of his assignments, Ge sees a photo of his victim and… himself.
Original title: Ji Yi Qiu Long
Director: Zhang Chi
Cinematographer: Yi Fang
Produced by: Ning Bo Holy High Film Task Group
Country and year: China, 2021
BACK TO THE WHARF
The year is 2007, the previous two decades were marked by China’s large-scale modernisation that had made the country a global player with countless nameless victims swept under the rug in the process. One of them was Song Hao. At the beginning of the 1990s, he is living in a small coastal fishing town and quickly becoming one of the best students. Everything is going as planned when his future is shattered to pieces – because of dirty politics and ubiquitous corruption he loses the opportunity to go to college. Furious, Song Hao accidentally kills an innocent man and then runs away, as far as he can, in order not to disgrace his family. It is the year 2007, Song Hao returns home to attend the funeral of his mother and finds the town significantly developed: visually, structurally and mentally. The authorities have changed, the people have changed, so have the standard of living. While trying to find a place for himself in this brave, new world, Song Hao will have to face his sins from the past. He will also have to deal with his father who helped him to escape all those years ago, and with the daughter of the man he killed.
Original title: Feng Ping Lang Jing
Director: Xiaofeng Li
Cinematographer: Songri Piao
Produced by: Xiamen Maoying Media, Tianjin Maoyan Weying Media, Fujian Pingtan Turan Movie, Shanghai Hanna Pictures, Tianjin Turan Movie, Shanghai Dashui Cultural Development
Country and year: China, 2020
BIPOLAR
A nameless musician comes to Tibet to experience a pilgrimage of sorts that is supposed to help her free herself from the traumas of the past. Particularly the memories of a certain dead boy who she had once loved. This is no ordinary day, as it is her birthday. Waiting in a restaurant for a meal she has ordered, the girl notices a lobster with a beautiful rainbow shell – the animal, as she is led to believe by the restaurant’s staff, is somehow sacred, maybe even magical. The musician cannot get over the imprisoned creature’s apparent suffering; thus, she decides to go on an entirely new pilgrimage – its only purpose is to put the lobster back to the distant place where it was captured. Riding through the Tibetan wilderness, the protagonist meets a number of characters who are connected to her past in one way or another: a wig salesman, a poetry-loving monk, a pregnant woman, a horse rider, etc. She dives deep into the increasingly dreamlike odyssey where nothing, yet everything is real.
Director: Queena Li
Cinematographer: Yuming Ke
Produced by: Nameless Pictures
Country and year: China, 2020
CHUPACABRA
Surrounded by the harsh and ethereal beauty of the Black Sea lives a family that should not have become a family at all. Nine-year-old Andrey often wanders around the local wilderness, combing the rocky beaches and seaside caves in search of various objects to fill his spacious imagination with ideas that can quench his sense of desperate loneliness. The distant man whom he learned to call his dad is a drunk and does not feel any parental responsibility towards a boy he had fathered. Andrey’s mother has problems with herself and is furious at the world for giving her another mouth to feed – she even considers sending the boy to a boarding school as far away from her and her problems as possible. Despite all these hardships, despite being aware that the world does not need nor want him, Andrey does not intend to give up. He is a survivor. The empty bottles found near the sea can be exchanged for a few dozen Russian roubles. The boy’s older female friend, though already taken, has such a pretty face that just being near her is a reward in itself. And the stray dog found near the shore can be many things in Andrey’s vivid imagination.
Director: Grigory Kolomytsev
Cinematographer: Alexey Venzos
Produced by: Production Center VGIK-Debut
Country and year: Russia, 2020
NO MAN OF GOD
It is mid-1980s. Bill Hagmaier, young, emphathetic, freshly appointed FBI profiler, begins an assignment that will radically change everything he was, is and will ever be. Trying to comprehend the driving force behind the killing spree of Ted Bundy, one of the most notorious serial killers of the 20th century who is currently awaiting the death penalty, Hagmaier starts talking to the man. One thing that makes him different from other more experienced agents who have tried to interrogate Bundy is that Bill does not try to control, dominate or intimidate the criminal. He wishes to understand him and treat the serial killer as an equal and in this way prepare himself for chasing others of his kind. What is more, he somehow connects to the man, and were it not for the reason of their meetings, their relationship could be even called friendly. The conversations between the good agent and the evil murderer do bring some answers, but at the same time leave several disturbing questions. Like, could Bundy have been a great profiler given different circumstances and Hagmaier a brutal serial killer himself?
Polish title: Zło wcielone
Director: Amber Sealey
Cinematographer: Karina Silva
Produced by: Company X
Polish distributor: Media4Fun
Country and year: USA, 2020
NORTH HOLLYWOOD
Friendship is one of the most important factors that shape the still fluid and chaotic identity of a young adult. Friends in whom a teenager can confide, whom he can trust, have far greater impact on their life than even the best and most understanding parents. Michael, who is standing precariously on the verge of adulthood, is very lucky to have Jay and Adolf on his side, he knows that he would not be the same person without them. Not because his friends do not lecture him on how to move the shower curtain inside the shower to stop the water from flooding the floor, but simply because around them Michael feels as if he could do anything. They are altar boys, they piss off the security guards from the nearest mall, they have fun. But youth has to fizzle out sometime and make room for the painful adulthood. Michael has a choice: he can go to college and study something that he has no interest in, or start working with his father, a construction worker. Both options seem miserable, but – life will not wait for those who lag behind.
Polish title: Młodość w North Hollywood
Director: Mikey Alfred
Cinematographer: Ayinde Anderson
Produced by: Illegal Civ
Country and year: USA, 2021
SON OF MONARCHS
Mendel was born and raised in Mexico; it is there that he grew up physically and matured emotionally, it is there that he experienced most of his first times and fell in love with the natural world, especially the ephemeral beauty and fascinating habits of the monarch butterflies. Ultimately, Mendel had left his country, family and friends to pursue a career of a New York biologist, effectively forgetting where he came from. After many years he is brought back to his former home by the death of his beloved grandma, and he has to face his estranged and furious brother as well as his own identity forged by two places thousands of miles and hundreds of people apart. After his unexpected return, the man begins to reminisce about all the beautiful and poignant moments that had shaped his childhood. He also learns many things he was not aware of before. Will poor Mendel, torn apart by his ambitions and pursuits, be able to come to terms with his turbulent past and pave the way to a better future?
Original title: Hijo de Monarcas
Director: Alexis Gambis
Cinematographer: Alejandro Mejía
Produced by: Imaginal Disc, Labocine
Country and year: Mexico, USA, 2020
