Kraków Film Festival

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The Cracow Film Festival is one of Europe's oldest events dedicated to documentary, animation and other short film forms. It has been organised year after year since 1961.

It was in Cracow that the Polish movie makers such as Krzysztof Kieślowski, Wojciech Wiszniewski, Bohdan Dziworski and Marcel Łoziński began their career. It was also here that the directors of animated films, including Ryszard Czekała, Jerzy Kucia, Julian Antoniszczak, Piotr Dumała and Zbigniew Rybczyński, winner of the Academy Award for the film Tango, made their debut.

Yet, such renowned documentary and animated film makers were not the only ones to participate and win prizes in Krakow, for the international festival laureates included also numerous artists who made their names as feature film directors: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Werner Herzog, Zoltán Huszárik, Jaromil Jireš, Claude Lelouch, Patrice Leconte, Mike Leigh and the recent Oscar laureate, Jan Svěrák.

Since 1998 the Festival grants an international life achievement award, called the Dragon of Dragons. Its first laureate was Bohdan Kosiński, Polish documentary maker, in 1999 the Prize was awarded to the classic of Polish animation, Jan Lenica. In 2000 the Dragon of Dragons Special Prize went to the French documentary maker Raymond Depardon. And the laureate of 2001 was Jan Švankmajer, 2002 – Werner Herzog, 2003 - Stephen and Timothy Quay, 2004 - Albert Maysles, 2005 - Yuriy Norshteyn, 2006 - Kazimierz Karabasz.

The unique character of the Cracow festival derives not only from the programme of the competition screenings, the Dragon and Hobby Horse prizes awarded by an international and Polish jury, the Prix UIP Cracow, the FIPRESCI and the FICC awards or numerous other prizes granted outside festival regulations, but also from the programme of accompanying events.