The Krakow Film Festival and the Polish Documentary Film Directors Guild have established the Marcel Łoziński Documentary Award – a distinction for filmmakers who, like the award’s patron, boldly push the boundaries of documentary cinema. In a world dominated by algorithms and ready-made formats, the prize recognises films that defy convention, steadfast in their honesty and creative vision.
The award will be presented to documentary films that expand the artistic boundaries of the medium. Neither the film’s length, nor the director’s country of origin, nor whether they are an established figure or a newcomer bears any relevance. What matters is creative courage and a distinctive cinematic language. These were the hallmarks of Marcel Łoziński’s work throughout his entire life.
Marcel Łoziński was truly special to us – a director, a mentor, a friend. Almost every year he would come to Kraków to present his films, but also to engage in conversation about what documentary cinema is and what it can become. Those conversations were invaluable and live in us forever. Establishing this award is a tribute to him, to his body of work, and serves as an encouragement to other filmmakers to push beyond the boundaries of documentary storytelling, comments festival director Barbara Orlicz-Szczypuła.
The aim of the award is not only to commemorate one of Poland’s greatest documentary filmmakers but also to affirm that his inventive approach to cinematic language lives on and continues to find successors around the world.
The establishment of the Marcel Łoziński Documentary Award sends an important signal that documentary cinema remains a space of creative freedom and artistic courage. The Polish Film Institute is proud to support an initiative that commemorates an outstanding filmmaker and aims to inspire future generations of filmmakers to seek their own language and venture beyond the boundaries of cinematic storytelling, comments Kamila Dorbach, Director of the Polish Film Institute.
The award is funded by the Polish Film Institute. Its involvement provides the prize with a lasting institutional foundation and a guarantee that it is going be awarded annually, establishing it as a permanent fixture on the map of global documentary cinema.
I am deeply grateful to the Krakow Film Festival for the idea of an award named after Marcel Łoziński. You were his favourite and most important festival; he remained loyal to you from the early 1970s right up until the very end. Dad couldn’t stand pomp and ceremony, but he was rather fond of receiving awards. He also enjoyed awarding prizes to documentaries he had fallen in love with. He had a soft spot for films that were bold, universal, uncompromising, and made with ingenuity. Films that treated people with respect – that was what mattered to him most. I hope his award will be just like that – given with a certain cool and without pretension to films that are beautiful in form and courageous in substance, comments director Paweł Łoziński, member of the jury for the Marcel Łoziński Documentary Award.
Films enter the competition after being recommended by distinguished figures associated with documentary cinema, whether as artists or programmers. Nominations have been submitted by: Marcin Borchardt (Poland), documentary filmmaker; Sergio Fant (Italy), curator and programmer at Trento Film Festival, Visions du Réel and the Berlinale; Emilie Bujès (Switzerland), artistic director of Visions du Réel; Marek Hovorka (Czech Republic), founder and director of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival; Amir Labaki (Brazil), director of the It’s All True festival in São Paulo; Katrine Kilgaard (Denmark), managing director of CPH:DOX; Tomasz Wolski (Poland), documentary filmmaker; Anita Piotrowska and Barbara Orlicz-Szczypuła (Poland), directors of the Krakow Film Festival; and Debra Zimmerman (USA), executive director of Women Make Movies.
These names speak for themselves: from its very first edition, the Marcel Łoziński Documentary Award will carry genuine international reach and legitimacy.
The winning film will be selected by figures whose names guarantee the highest standards. This year’s jury comprises: María Campaña Ramia – festival curator and programmer, notably at IDFA; Sergei Loznitsa – one of the most important contemporary filmmakers working in both documentary and fiction; and Paweł Łoziński – the artistic heir to the award’s patron.
Marcel Łoziński (1940–2025) – one of the most important Polish documentary filmmakers. A graduate of the Faculty of Communications at the Warsaw University of Technology and the Directing Department at the Łódź Film School, he began his career as a sound engineer at the Documentary Film Studio. In the 1970s and 80s, he collaborated with the Polish Television and Andrzej Wajda’s Film Unit X. In his films, he combined observation with elements of staging and artistic provocation, seeking tools to reveal truths about people and the mechanisms of reality – both the specific realities of communist-era Poland and the universal human condition.
He received an Academy Award nomination for 89 mm from Europe (1994), was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a lecturer at the Wajda School. A recipient of numerous prestigious national and international awards, he was decorated with the Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture. He maintained a lifelong association with the Krakow Film Festival – as a multiple award winner, a long-standing member of the Programme Board of the Krakow Film Foundation, and the recipient of the festival’s highest honour, the Dragon of Dragons Award, bestowed upon him in 2016 for his lifetime achievement and contribution to the development of world documentary cinema.
The award is funded by the Polish Film Institute (PISF).
The award is partnered by DAE.
Business Doc Europe is the main media partner.
The Krakow Film Festival is on the exclusive list of film events qualifying for the Academy Awards® in short film categories (fiction, animation, documentary) and feature-length documentary, the European Film Awards in the same categories, and serves as a qualifying event for the BAFTA Awards.
The Krakow Film Festival is organised with financial support from the City of Krakow, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Polish Film Institute, and the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme. The Polish Filmmakers Association serves as co-organiser.
The 66th Krakow Film Festival will be held in cinemas from 31 May to 7 June 2027 and online on KFF VOD from 5 June to 19 June 2026.