This is a showcase of the best of the Wrocław festival’s programme: unconventional and daring films that, using an innovative language, address the problems of the contemporary world and provoke discussion about the human condition today, while also restoring cinema’s status as an art form.

This year’s selection will feature films that won the most important awards at the 15th T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival, including the Grand Prix winner, “Lucifer” by Gusta Van den Berghe (also awarded at the Tallinn and Paris L’Europe autour de l’Europe festivals), a story about a fallen angel who awakens the spiritually lethargic inhabitants of a Mexican village. Shot using a tondoscope resembling a “fisheye” lens, the film literally reveals new horizons in cinema!

Carlos M. Quintela’s “The New Man” was also honoured at the IFF in Rotterdam and received a jury distinction at the Wrocław festival. It is a partly fictional, partly documentary portrait of the inhabitants of a post-industrial Cuban province, who seem to survive on absurd humour and nostalgia for the former glory of the communist paradise.

Another selection is Miguel Gomes’s trilogy “Arabian Nights”, a production acclaimed at the Sydney festival and by the International Federation of Film Critics, and honoured with the FIPRESCI award in Wrocław. This three-part, six-hour epic places crisis-ridden contemporary Portugal within the fairy-tale framework of Scheherazade’s stories—melancholic and humorous at the same time. The programme also includes “Goodnight Mommy” by Severin Fiala and screenwriter Veronika Franz, a daring combination of surrealist horror and psychological thriller that the New Horizons audience chose as the festival’s best film. Also featured is the latest work by Abel Ferrara, director of the legendary “Bad Lieutenant”. His “Pasolini” is a tribute to the master of Italian cinema, reconstructing the final hours of his life.

The Muza Cinema invites audiences from 8 to 14 January 2016. Screenings will take place in the small hall; tickets cost PLN 12 (PLN 10 with a pass—7 titles for PLN 70).

  • 8 January, Friday
    • 17:15 > T-Mobile NHT > Arabian Nights—Part 1
    • 19:30 > T-Mobile NHT > Pasolini
  • 9 January, Saturday
    • 14:30 > T-Mobile NHT > Arabian Nights—Part 2
    • 17:00 > T-Mobile NHT > The New Man
    • 18:45 > T-Mobile NHT > Lucifer
  • 10 January, Sunday
    • 13:30 > T-Mobile NHT > Goodnight Mommy
    • 15:30 > T-Mobile NHT > Arabian Nights—Part 3
  • 11 January, Monday
    • 17:30 > T-Mobile NHT > Pasolini
    • 19:15 > T-Mobile NHT > Arabian Nights—Part 1
  • 12 January, Tuesday
    • 17:30 > T-Mobile NHT > Lucifer
    • 19:30 > T-Mobile NHT > Arabian Nights—Part 2
  • 13 January, Wednesday
    • 17:30 > T-Mobile NHT > Arabian Nights—Part 3
  • 14 January, Thursday
    • 17:30 > T-Mobile NHT > The New Man
    • 19:30 > T-Mobile NHT > Goodnight Mommy.

Muza Cultural Centre/ii