2026

15th Edition of the Hommage à Kieślowski Festival – “Man on the Threshold”

This year’s edition of our project will take place on 27–30 August 2026 and carries a special significance. Fifteen years of the festival’s activity coincides with the 30th anniversary of the death of Krzysztof Kieślowski, one of the most important figures in Polish and European film culture. Over the years we have sought to approach his work from many perspectives: inviting the director’s collaborators, film scholars, and placing his films in dialogue with other works of European and world cinema. Our aim has been to show that Kieślowski belongs not only to history but remains a living partner in the contemporary conversation about the human condition.

From the very beginning, we did not want to treat the author of The Double Life of Véronique as a monolithic figure. Instead, we were interested in the continuity of themes and intuitions throughout the different stages of his work—between documentary and fiction, between Poland and France, between a precise observation of reality and an intuition of what remains invisible. For us, Kieślowski represents attentiveness to the other person and sensitivity to the fragility of existence. His cinema does not offer simple answers; rather, it teaches us to look where certainty ends and ambiguity begins.

For us, Sokołowsko is not only a place of remembrance but also a space for continuing to read and reinterpret Kieślowski. The Krzysztof Kieślowski Archive, developed by the In Situ Foundation, aims to become a living centre for research, digitisation and artistic activity. This is also visible in new projects inspired by his work, including a cinematic tribute prepared by the Quay Brothers and the animated film The Deer, based on an unrealised script idea from Kieślowski’s student years, currently being developed at the Wrocław Feature Film Studio.

The theme of this year’s edition is “Man on the Threshold.” We understand it broadly—as an existential, social and spiritual experience. Contemporary life increasingly places us in a state of transition: between security and fear, community and isolation, the real and the virtual. Anthropology calls such a state liminality—a threshold moment when the old order no longer applies and the new one has not yet fully emerged. The fifteenth edition of the festival is for us precisely such a moment: a chance to look back while also trying to grasp what is yet to come.

This idea is also well captured by the concept of “metaxy,” (Greek: μεταξύ) a space “in-between.” Kieślowski’s cinema unfolds precisely in this area—between realism and metaphysics, between moral judgement and its suspension. The protagonists of his films often stand on the edge of a decision: between guilt and innocence, loyalty and betrayal, hope and resignation.

For this reason, the festival programme will include films about characters undergoing moments of transformation, such as Sweet Rush (Tatarak) by Andrzej Wajda, The Spindle of Time (Wrzeciono czasu” by Andrzej Kondratiuk and Four Nights with Anna (Cztery noce z Anną) by Jerzy Skolimowski. These works engage in dialogue with Kieślowski’s sensibility and remind us that cinema remains a space for asking questions about the meaning of human choices.

An important element of the programme will also be the section Polish–Czech Film Dialogues, recalling the long-standing artistic connections between the two cinematographies. It will include a retrospective of the Czech classic Zbyněk Brynych, featuring Transport from Paradise and The Fifth Horseman Is Fear, the international co-production Franz directed by Agnieszka Holland, as well as Jan Švankmajer’s surrealist film Conspirators of Pleasure, which resonates in an intriguing way with the themes of Four Nights with Anna by Jerzy Skolimowski.

The programme will of course also present new voices in European cinema in the sections New Polish Cinema, Best of Millennium Docs Against Gravity, and in special screenings.

Returning to Kieślowski today, we do not wish merely to celebrate a great name. Rather, we want to reread his work and to grow into it again and again. In a world that increasingly demands quick judgments and simple answers, Kieślowski’s cinema reminds us that the human being reveals themselves most fully precisely on the threshold—where questions about meaning, responsibility and the presence of the other are born.