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“Leave No Marks” would be a more apt translation from the Polish title of “Leave No Traces,” referring as it does to a horrifying command from one police officer to another, heard early on in this marathon fact-based drama: “Hit the stomach so you leave no marks, not on the back.” They’re in the middle of administering a merciless, unprovoked beating — a hard rain of combat boots and handheld batons — to a very soft target in 18-year-old student Grzegorz Przemyk, holding nothing back but acute physical evidence of their ire, even as the victim’s stunned best friend looks on. Those missing marks, or traces, are only the first deception in the state’s protracted, punishing efforts to disprove what they know really happened, and Jan P. Matuszyński’s film unravels the conspiracy with earnest, exhaustive fury.

It’s a true-crime story that could be dramatized with equal power as a tight,...

"I also want someone to hold hands with. To talk to... about my feelings." Mubi has debuted a new official trailer for an indie film from Poland titled Sweat, which originally premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year. It also played at the Zurich, Hamburg, Chicago, Tokyo, New Horizons, Tallinn Black Nights, and Rotterdam Film Festivals. Sweat is about three days in the life of fitness motivator Sylwia Zajac, a social media celebrity surrounded by loyal employees and admirers, who is really looking for true intimacy. It's yet another cautionary tale trying to bring to the light the honest truth about how vapid and soul-sucking social media is, and how it's easy to get caught up in the craze of the attention it brings. Magdalena Kolesnik stars as Sylwia. This also stars Julian Swiezewski, Aleksandra Konieczna, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Tomasz Orpinski, Lech Lotocki, and Magdalena Kuta. This looks like it's going to be very,...

“Sweat,” which is screening at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Göteborg Film Festival this week, has attracted additional sales, New Europe Film Sales has reported. The film, which was selected by Cannes last year, had been previously been sold widely.

Magnus Von Horn’s “poised, impressive drama,” as it was called in its review in Variety, has been acquired by One from the Heart in Greece; First Hand Films in Switzerland; Capella Film for Russia and Cis; and Blue Swan Entertainment for Italy, San Marino and Vatican.

As previously announced, Arp acquired French rights; Curzon took U.K./Ireland; Mubi took U.S., Latin America, India and Turkey; while other sales included Rialto (Australia/New Zealand), Elamedia (Spain), Scanorama (Baltics), Demiurg (ex-Yugoslavia), Imagine (Benelux), Mozinet (Hungary), and Mer Film (Norway).

The film tracks Polish fitness guru Sylwia – who has 600,000 Instagram followers and no friends – across a three-day whirl of professional engagements,...

There are some movie characters who take their time to cement themselves onscreen, but Sylwia Zajac (Magdalena Kolesnik), the celebrity workout instructor and social media fiend at the heart of “Sweat,” establishes herself in a matter of seconds. Speeding through a rapid-fire workout routine in the zippy opening sequence of director Magnus von Horn’s taut and emotional character study, Sylwia wears a frozen grin as she moves through an energetic physical routine for a boisterous crowd as the camera swoops around her. There’s an inherent sensuality to Sylwia’s breathless assemblage of planks and pushups, but the balletic display buries the essence of the person beneath the surface. Her face tells a different story, with wide eyes hinting at the anxious, fragile human she’s struggling to contain for the cameras. “Sweat” evaluates that struggle as it pushes Sylwia to a breaking point.

Swedish director Von Horn’s...

There are some movie characters who take their time to cement themselves onscreen, but Sylwia Zajac (Magdalena Kolesnik), the celebrity workout instructor and social media fiend at the heart of “Sweat,” establishes herself in a matter of seconds. Speeding through a rapid-fire workout routine in the zippy opening sequence of director Magnus von Horn’s taut and emotional character study, Sylwia wears a frozen grin as she moves through an energetic physical routine for a boisterous crowd as the camera swoops around her. There’s an inherent sensuality to Sylwia’s breathless assemblage of planks and pushups, but the balletic display buries the essence of the person beneath the surface. Her face tells a different story, with wide eyes hinting at the anxious, fragile human she’s struggling to contain for the cameras. “Sweat” evaluates that struggle as it pushes Sylwia to a breaking point.

Swedish director Von Horn’s...

Corpus Christi Film Movement Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Jan Komasa Screenwriter: Mateusz Pacewicz Cast: Bartosz Bielenia, Aleksandra Konieczna, Eliza Rycembel, Tomasz Zietek, Barbara Kurzaj, Leszek Lichota Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 6/13/20 Opens: June 23, 2020 You may leave this film, a rigorous drama embellished with […]

The post Corpus Christi Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

What makes a priest a priest? Technically, the answer is devotion to God, completion of seminary training, and ordination by a bishop to deacon status — all this must happen before one can wear the collar. But Jan Komasa’s stunning, quietly subversive “Corpus Christi” sees the question in more existential terms, permitting a well-meaning juvenile delinquent to skip all that spiritual preparation and to con a small Polish community into accepting him as a kind of proxy while the parish’s regular priest sobers up. The result makes for .

With his tortured energy and intense, ice-on-fire eyes, this mysterious interloper is earnest, not unhandsome, and surprisingly effective in his unconventional methods, and the serious-minded movie’s sympathy is unambiguously in his corner, even if what he’s doing is immediate grounds for excommunication. Inspired by real events, the film dramatizes what turns out to be a fairly common occurrence in contemporary Poland: Evidently,...

"To forgive doesn't mean to forget." Film Movement has unveiled the Us trailer for an indie drama from Poland titled Corpus Christi, which was one of the big discoveries at the Venice Film Festival earlier this fall. It also played at the Toronto Film Festival, and is Poland's submission to the Academy Awards. Inspired by real events, it tells the story of a 20-year-old fresh out of a Youth Detention Center for murder, but his crime prevents him from applying to the seminary. However, he ends up being mistaken as the priest and decides to start pretending to be a real priest at a parish in a small town. An honest story about forgiveness and faith. Starring Bartosz Bielenia as Daniel, along with Aleksandra Konieczna, Eliza Rycembel, Leszek Lichota, Łukasz Simlat, Tomasz Zietek, and Barbara Kurzaj. This film earned some glowing reviews out of Venice, and is a very unique...

Corpus Christi (Boże Ciało) director Jan Komasa: "I was looking for a moment in the film that sort of detaches from just storytelling.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

During dinner at Il Gattopardo across the street from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Corpus Christi (Boze Cialo) director Jan Komasa told me that he is a “big fan” of Andrey Zvyagintsev and his films Loveless and Leviathan. Jan’s composers Evgueni Galperine and Sacha Galperine also scored François Ozon's By The Grace Of God and Barry Levinson’s The Wizard Of Lies, starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer with Alessandro Nivola on the Bernie Madoff scandal.

Jan Komasa on Bartosz Bielenia: “In Warsaw now he is part of Krzysztof Warlikowski, very renowned European theatre director - he is part of his troupe.”

Corpus Christi, screenplay by Mateusz Pacewicz, stars Bartosz Bielenia (from Krzysztof Warlikowski’s theatre troupe) with Eliza Rycembel,...

The American Film Institute unveiled their lineup for AFI Fest’s World Cinema and the inaugural Documentary section. The fest will take place November 14-21 in Los Angeles.

The world cinema section will include five international feature film Oscar submissions and 16 titles from 19 countries. This includes the Los Angeles premiere of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life as well as Levan Akin’s And We Danced from Sweden, Sophie Deraspe’s Antigone from Canada, Jan Komasa’s Corpus Christi from Poland, Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor from Italy and Cornlieu’s The Whistlers from Romania.

On the documentary side, the fest will include Alex Gibney’s Citizen K as well as Desert One from two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple. Other films in the doc lineup include Bikram: Yoga, Guru, Predator from Eva Orner, Jolie Coiffure from Rosine Mbakam and The Human Factor from Dror Moreh.

Read AFI Fest’s...

Faith is inherently about putting your complete trust in something or someone without knowing whether the object deserves such blind allegiance. We have faith in God because believing there’s purpose to atrocities is easier than accepting a nihilistic outlook on life just like the presence of miracles proves good fortune is earned so you won’t feel guilty upon realizing how you have it better than someone else. It’s therefore impossible not to let it warp your morality until everything possesses the need for black and white clarity. Kids in juvenile lock-up are scum without exception. A reformed drunk hits and kills six kids in an automobile collision and he must be to blame. The mayor profits from his government connections, but that’s merely payment for serving the town.

Labels of good and evil are thus meticulously and often unjustly placed upon actions and events without the...

New projects revealed, including thriller described as “David Lynch meets Ken Loach”.

New films by internationally feted Polish filmmakers Jan Komasa, Kuba Czekaj and Dorota Kedzierzawska were among 20 projects presented to sales agents, distributors and festival programmers at the sixth edition of the Polish Days (8-10 August) during this week’s New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw.

Komasa - who made his feature debut with Suicide Room - and his producer Leszek Bodzak of Aurum Film (The Last Family) pitched the contemporary social drama Corpus Christi which is based on screenwriter Mateusz Pacewicz’s first screenplay for cinema.

The €1m project is being structured as a Polish-French co-production and will begin principal photography in spring 2018.

Bodzak also presented a second feature project, Borys Lankosz’s thriller Dark, Almost Night, which he described as “David Lynch meets Ken Loach”, to begin shooting this autumn with The Last Family’s Dawid Ogrodnik and Aleksandra Konieczna in the cast...

Locarno premiere took home eight awards; meanwhile Ukraine greenlights cash rebate scheme.

Jan P. Matuszynski’s feature debut The Last Family swept the board at this year’s Gdynia Film Festival in Poland (19-24 September) with eight awards, including the Golden Lions Grand Prix as well as the awards for Best Actor and Actress and the Audience Award.

The tragicomic story also picked up the Journalists Award, the Onetu Award for the three lead actors Aleksandra Konieczna, Andrzej Seweryn and Dawid Ogrodnik, as well as the Elle Crystal Star and the Golden Kangaroo for director Matuszynski.

Handled internationally by New Europe Film Sales and distributed theatrically in Poland by Kino Swiat, The Last Family had its world premiere in competition at last month’s Locarno Film Festival where the Leopard for Best Actor was awarded to star Andrzej Seweryn for his performance.

Tomasz Wasilewski’s Berlinale competition title United States Of Love - also with New Film...