With a young new team led by Joanna Szymańska-Szcześniak and program director Bartłomiej Pulcyn, the Warsaw Film Festival kicked off its 41st edition at eight different venues. The reorientation was already evident in the visual appearance. In addition to the traditional international competitions for feature films, documentaries, and short films, debut works, and special screenings, there were also new sections. These included “Confrontations,” a series of 24 controversial films, and “Cinema, My Love,” featuring films selected by stars and film experts. Not to be forgotten is the new section “Animus, Cinema of Values,” which aims to encourage audiences to engage with values that still matter today in an increasingly polarized world.
Unfortunately, the ecumenical jury, consisting of Chantal Laroche Poupard from France, Jarosław Raczak from Poland, and Holger Twele from Germany, saw little of these exciting new sections, concentrating instead on the 15 feature films in the main competition. The festival's opening film, “Anniversary” by Polish-born, US-based director Jan Komasa, which was also screened in the international main competition, set the tone for the vast majority of films in this section: the threat to the family and its eventual breakdown, viewed from a wide variety of perspectives.
In Komasa's explicitly political film, the foundations of a well-to-do middle-class family, over a period of five years anchored by birthday celebrations, are shaken when a new family member joins the close-knit community through marriage. She is the former student of the mother of three adult children, played by Diane Lane. She provokes the family with a book she has written with the telling title “Change.” It is met with incomprehension by the older family members, turns the son into a turncoat, and encourages the younger daughters to violent resistance. It's a pity that the technically convincing film has become overly dialogue-heavy.
Visually and morally particularly remarkable was “Our Girls” (Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, 2025) by Mike van Diem, the tragicomic story of two families who have been vacationing in the Alps for ten years in a villa they bought together. Against a magnificent mountain backdrop, a drama unfolds when the two teenage daughters, who are very different in temperament, have an accident that brings them to the brink of death. Only one of them has a real chance of survival if she receives a heart transplant from the other. In their existential crisis, the parents of the two girls go to extremes, causing the well-guarded facade of the families to collapse.
Other films in the competition are no less dramatic. “Father” (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, 2025) by Tereza Nvotná focuses on a busy businessman who, despite his professional commitments, lovingly cares for his family and especially his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Like every morning, he takes her to kindergarten. Only this time, in the middle of a heatwave, he forgets his child in the car, and six hours later she is dead. Overwhelmed by guilt for his inexplicable mistake, which also has legal consequences, his life is completely derailed.
Another tough watch is Wojciech Smarzowski's "Home Sweet Home" (Poland, 2025) about domestic violence. A young woman from a modest background meets an influential politician several years her senior on the internet and falls in love with him. The idyll, complete with beautiful vacations, seems perfect until the two marry and a child is on the way. Suddenly, the husband, who has always felt betrayed by women, shows his true colors. His newlywed wife is now locked up, humiliated, beaten, and tortured, while the serious accusations against him are downplayed by parts of the police, the church, and society, and are initially difficult to prove in court. This issue seems to be particularly virulent at present, and not only in Poland. It could be argued that the film depicts the degrading scenes of violence in great detail, both realistically and as traumatic visions of fear, and could therefore scare off part of the audience.
Children are always the ones who suffer when family relationships break down. The South Korean film “The World of Love” by Yoon Ga-eun (2025) uses surprising twists and a nuanced approach to explore the question of whether victims of child sexual abuse are scarred for life. A 17-year-old schoolgirl who claims to have been abused by her uncle as a child does not want to be pigeonholed in this way and fights in her class for her right to a fulfilling life. In the highly artificial film “Babystar” (Germany, 2025) by Joscha Bongard, the only German contribution, a sheltered 16-year-old girl rebels against her parents when, with the birth of her sister, she realizes that her parents have been exploiting her feelings and experiences on social media for their own gain, and she wants to spare her little sister this fate.
Only after the death of their mother, who suffered from dementia, do the three adult daughters in “Y” (Romania, Greece, 2025) by Maria Popistasu and Alexandru Bacia learn that their mother once worked in one of the Romanian orphanages founded by dictator Ceaucescu, where children were left to fend for themselves in degrading conditions and were doomed to die. Only one of the sisters is willing to confront this unresolved past, whereby the divide between the middle-class family and the long scenes from a documentary film that was also broadcast in Germany is clearly expressed, but does not do justice to either the children who were abandoned at the time or the fictional family.
The Ecumenical Jury wanted to send at least a small sign of hope with its awards. A Commendation went to “Nino” (France, 2025) by Pauline Loquès, which, in addition to the young Fipresci Jury, also received the festival's main prize awarded by the city of Warsaw, making it the festival's big favorite. Nino, who has just turned 29, learns rather by chance during an examination that he has cancer and needs urgent treatment. He has three days over the weekend to prepare himself and find someone to accompany him to his first chemotherapy session.
The debut feature film captivates audiences with its Canadian lead actor Théodore Pellerin and its observational style of filmmaking. On his three-day journey through the anonymous cityscapes of Paris, oscillating between silent despair and stoic composure, Nino encounters many people who have their own destinies to bear and, like Nino, are hardly able to communicate. A film carried by compassion and great humanity, it shows that true friends, tenderness, and mutual understanding do exist.
The award went to “Brother” (Poland, Croatia, 2025) by Maciej Sobieszczański. In this touching film, 14-year-old Dawid grows up with his nine-year-old brother in a run-down apartment building with their mother. Their father is in prison for burglary and theft, but the little brother doesn't want to know anything about that. He idealizes his father and can't stand his mother's new boyfriend. Torn between his father's rigid instructions and his love for his mother and brother, Daniel tries to find his own way in life. With many close-ups and a moving handheld camera, the film lets us participate in Dawid's struggle to find his place in life, with the likeable lead actor giving a thoroughly convincing performance. A moving film about family cohesion, brotherly love, and the value of forgiveness, which shows a young generation perspectives for the future.