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Director Agnieszka Smoczyńska's (The Silent Twins) new film Hot Spot takes place in a dystopian world where AI has enslaved humanity and subjects people to untold horrors. The new film stars Noomi Rapace, Andrzej Konopka, and Reika Kirishima and promises to portray a chilling, apocalyptic future. Kiska Higgs, president of production and acquisitions at Focus Features, which has picked up the film, told the Hollywood Reporter:

"Agnieszka is a singular visionary whose work — be it about vampire mermaids, silent twins or a tech-ruled society — is both visually astounding and thematically prophetic, and we can’t wait to share her latest with the world."

Related Exclusive: Director Agnieszka Smoczyńska Discusses The Silent Twins

Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska makes her English language feature debut with The Silent Twins.

Hot Spot is set in a near-future society where sentient AI has subjugated humanity. Rapace plays a private investigator recruited by the AI to solve a murder and,...

Apocalypse Now: Four Sci-Fi Parables by Piotr Szulkin is now showing on Mubi in many countries.O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization.When considering the complex and fraught history of Polish science-fiction cinema, one may quote the first words of Stanisław Lem’s novel Eden, which opens a mature period of his writing: “There was a miscalculation.” Between government censorship and long periods of economic recession, the genre was bound to fail.The first Polish sci-fi films were shorts made for TV through the 1960s and ’70s. These films were beloved by TV audiences and often very funny, but they were made with shoestring budgets and did not screen in cinemas. A notable early attempt at creating an ambitious science-fiction film was Andrzej Żuławski’s On the Silver Globe (1988), which aimed for a grand, epic canvas. Because of the Space Race, both Polish politicians and audiences had high expectations for this film.

Closing ceremony of festival in Gdynia sees Polish film community speak up against “awful hatred” directed at Holland in recent weeks.

Pawel Maslona’s second feature Scarborn (Kos) won the Grand Prix - Golden Lion at the 48th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia whose closing ceremony saw the Polish film community express their solidarity with Agnieszka Holland in the light of the vociferous political campaign against her and her film The Green Border.

In his acceptance speech, Maslona spoke out against the “awful hatred” directed at Holland in recent weeks and noted that, despite Poland being a country with a strong Christian faith,...

With her enigmatically titled Woman Of… (Kobieta z..), Malgorzata Szumowska returns from the magical satire of Never Gonna Snow Again to trenchant social realism, recounting a journey lasting half a lifetime, of sacrifice, sorrow and resilience.

Written and directed in collaboration with regular cinematographer and creative partner Michal Englert, this is a rare close-up of an older trans woman making tough choices in a majority Catholic country that remains legislatively and socially hostile. The film’s compassionate gaze and stirring performances make it an illuminating window into gender recognition in an unaccommodating environment.

Like many dramas focused on a highly specific community and developed out of extensive interviews, Woman Of… doesn’t entirely escape the feel of a representational project that ticks all the required boxes in a not entirely seamless narrative. However, that doesn’t make it any less sincere or moving, not only in the principal character’s...

There will come a time, perhaps not even too far from now, when films like “Woman Of…” may feel, if not old hat, at least familiar, part of a genre unto itself: not a coming-of-age story but a coming-of-self one, tracing the particular life stages of identifying oneself as transgender, accepting oneself as such, and finally living that truth out loud. Spanning decades in its closeup portrait of a Polish trans woman traveling that trajectory in a social climate hostile to her very existence, Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert’s heart-on-sleeve film isn’t aiming to be revolutionary — there’s an old-fashioned melodramatic heft to its episodic construction, setting its heroine’s tale in a pointedly mainstream context. But it still represents a bold gesture of cinematic allyship, drawing attention as it does to Poland’s dire record on LGBT rights.

Those merits will serve this Venice competition premiere well on the festival circuit,...

Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s transgender drama Women Of world premieres in Competition at the Venice Film Festival on Friday.

As ever the filmmaking team – who have been working together for more than two decades on titles such as Mug, In The Name Of and French-language drama Elles – are pushing boundaries in their native Poland.

Set against the backdrop of the country’s transition from communism to capitalism, Woman Of follows protagonist Aniela Wesoły across the course of 45 years as she seeks to live freely as a trans woman in a small provincial town.

The film charts Wesoly’s journey with her wife, as the couple navigate her transition in an environment where it is neither recognized nor accepted.

“We’ve been thinking about this for a long time. The first impulse was 20 years ago when Michal [who is also a cinematographer] filmed one of the first [transition] surgeries,” says Szumowska.

“But there...

Fears related to immigration, terrorism, and nationalism are a running theme in many Sundance entries this year, although probably none of the films addresses the commingled issues in such a potent yet roundabout way as Jacek Borcuch’s “Dolce Fine Giornata.” This satisfyingly complex drama stars Polish cinema veteran Krystyna Janda (going back to Wadja’s 1977 “Man of Marble”) as a celebrated poet whose enviable semi-retired life under the Tuscan sun rapidly frays when her “artistic license” in a public speech appears to condone suicide bombers.

This very European take on various hot-button topics lacks the kind of easily encapsulated gist that makes for easy marketing. But it’s a fine fifth feature for actor-turned-auteur Borcuch, as good as, yet very different from, 2009’s excellent teenage punk flashback “All That I Love.” Specialty distributors may want to climb on board his train now, as another film or two this strong...