Every year the third day of the Krakow Film Festival ends with the ceremony devoted to the most important festival award – Dragon of Dragons – awarded for an exceptional contribution to the development of the world cinema. This time the Krakow Film Foundation Programme Council decided to honour an outstanding documentary filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa. The 21st winner of this prestigious prize is also the youngest one in the history of the award.<\/b><\/p>\n
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“I can say that Krakow Film Festival is my festival. I came here with my first film and since then each of my documentary films has been shown here. So in this sense Krakow is my city” – said Sergei Loznitsa.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The head of the Programme Council, film critic and scholar Prof. Tadeusz Lubelski said that “despite the variety of genres Loznitsa’s films are very coherent. First of all, in the stylistic sense: they are easily recognized by the distinctive minimalism, infinitely extended shots (as if he was waiting to extract from reality a hidden truth), carefully counted rhythm and precisely created soundtrack. It produces a certain archaic effect as if the director was going back to one of the previous eras in the history of cinema to reformulate its language, with a complete absence of the author’s commentary neither as voiceover nor non-diegetic music\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The official Dragon of Dragons ceremony took place on <\/span>May 29th, 2018<\/b> during the 58th Krakow Film Festival. What is more, thanks to the retrospective included in the festival programme, we will see various extraordinary films made by the director and among them his latest documentary \u201cVictory Day\u201d (\u201cDen\u2019 Pobedy\u201d), which will have in Krakow its Polish premiere. The traditional winner’s master class will take place on May 30th at 3 PM in Ma\u0142opolski Ogr\u00f3d Sztuki.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ceremony ended with the screening of three films personally introduced by the director: \u201cThe Letter\u201d, \u201cThe Train Stop\u201d and \u201cThe Old Jewish Cemetery\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sergei Loznitsa <\/b>was born on September 5th, 1964 in Baranovchi in today’s Belarus which was at the time a part of the Soviet Union. He was growing up and studying in Kiev where he graduated from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute as an engineer and mathematician. For a few years he was doing research in the Institute of Cybernetics and worked as a Japanese translator. In 1997 he graduated with honours in film production and directing from Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. He lives in Berlin.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n During his 20-year-old career Loznitsa made a lot of films that turned out to be an international success. His three feature films “My Joy” (2010), “In the Fog” (FIPRESCI Award) (2012), \u201cA Gentle Creature\u201d (2017) and one documentary \u201cMaidan\u201d had their world premieres at the Cannes Film Festival and this year he received the best director award in the Un Certain Regard competition for his feature film \u201cDonbass\u201d. His other feature documentary \u201cThe Event\u201d premiered in Venice in 2015. His films won numerous awards at film festivals around the world.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Loznitsa’a documentary debut \u201cToday We Are Going to Build a House\u201d was awarded at KFF the Bronze Dragon award. In the following years he received in Krakow the main festival awards three times: in 2006 the Golden Dragon for \u201cBlockade\u201d, in 2008 the Golden Horn for \u201cRevue\u201d and in 2013 once again the Golden Dragon for \u201cThe Letter\u201d. Last year, as a part of the Focus on Germany section, we presented his film \u201cAusterlitz\u201d. In 2007 he was a member of the International Short Film Competition jury with Andrzej \u017bu\u0142awski as the head of the jury.<\/span> <\/p>\n
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