Although official nominations for Oscars 2018 will be announced on January 23, these three Polish productions have big chances of winning.
Spoor (Polish: Pokot) is a 2017 Polish crime film which is directed by Agnieszka Holland and Kasia Adamiak. Spoor was selected to compete for the Golden Bear in the main competition section of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival. In Berlin, the film won the Alfred Bauer Prize: Silver Bear. Spoor is selected as the Polish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards.
The film is set in a remote mountainous region of the Klodzko Valley in south-western Poland. Janina Duszejko, an elderly woman, becomes a witness to a violent and mysterious death of several hunters. She is convinced she knows who the murderer is, but nobody believes her.
Agnieszka Holland is one of Polish most eminent filmmakers. She began her career as an assistant to directors Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda. She emigrated to France just before the start of the martial law in Poland in 1981.Holland is best known for her films Europa Europa, In Darkness and she is also a director of the famous Netflix series House of Cards. Agnieszka Holland is a well-known and respected director of the American Academy of Film, too. She has been nominated for three Oscars, including twice in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
Footage from the film Spoor, press materials
Loving Vincent (Polish: Twój Vincent) is a biographical animated drama film about the life and the circumstances of the death of a famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. It is the first fully painted animated feature film. It is written and directed by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman.
Each of the film’s 65,000 frames is an oil painting on canvas, using the same technique as Van Gogh, created by a team of 115 painters. The film premiered at the 2017 Annecy International Animated Film Festival.
Loving Vincent has been funded by the Polish Film Institute and partially through the campaign of Kickstarter. Kickstarter is an American public-benefit corporation which is located in New York. This company maintains a global crowdfunding platform.
Footage from the film Living Vincent, press materials
Moomins and the Winter Wonderland (Polish: Magiczna Zima Muminków) is produced by Finnish film company Filmkompaniet and Poland’s Animoon Sp. z o.o. Los Angeles-Based Global Genesis Group is handling worldwide sales.
The Moomins were created by Finnish writer Tove Jansson in a series of books and comic strips, originally published in Swedish in the 1940s.The iconic fairy tale characters are a carefree family resembling lovable hippopotamuses.
Moomins and the Winter Wonderland is based on Jansson’s original books, with a screenplay from Małgorzata Wieckowicz-Zyla, Piotr Szczepanowicz and Ira Carpelan. It is created from existing, vintage footage from original stop-motion Moomins productions co-produced by Se-ma-for and Jupiter Film in the 1980s.The footage will be in 4K quality.
Finland is celebrating the 100-year anniversary of its national independence in 2017 and the Winter Wonderland has been selected as an official representative cultural project of the anniversary in Finland.
Global Genesis Group has already signed a deal with Hong Kong’s Spring Era Films for a Chinese theatrical release of the film. Academy Award-winning Swedish actress Alicia Vikander is set to star in the film, voicing two of the lead characters (Little My and Sorry-oo).
Footage from the trailer on youtube
Loving Vincent and Moomins and the Winter Wonderland are among the 26 selected animated films, including “Cars 3”, “Despicable me 3” and “The Lego Batman Movie.”
The Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 4 2018 and will be broadcast live to more than 225 countries.
Sources: Hollywood reporter, Wikipedia, gazeta.pl