Founded in Gdansk in 1974, and later moving to neighbouring Gdynia, the Polish Film Festival is the event of the year for anyone keen to keep tabs on what's happening in Polish cinema.
Previous winners of the coveted Golden Lions Award for Best Picture read like a who's who of Poland's greats, with Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Zanussi, Agnieszka Holland, Jerzy Hoffman and Krzysztof Kieslowski to name but a few.
Two years ago, after a difficult period in the doldrums following the collapse of the Iron Curtain - and the irony of the lack of funding that that entailed - pundits began to whisper of a revival in Polish cinema.
Several of the movies made that year would go on to make waves in the wider world, including black comedy The Reverse by debut director Borys Lankosz, Xawery Zulawski's Snow White and Russian Red, Wojciech Smarzowski's The Dark House and Katarzyna Roslaniec's Mall Girls, all by young blood in the Polish film industry.
This year also promises to be one to remember. However, not without a severe shake-up. In previous years, the festival directors have screened 25 or more movies in the main competition, democratically presenting virtually every new Polish film of the year.
This year, artistic director Michal Chacinski has whittled this down to just twelve, in what's intended to be a crème de la crème approach. Not everyone is happy.
However, for film critics arriving from abroad, the main competition has some head-swivelling treats in store, with movies by both debut directors and veteran hands.
Amongst the twelve in the main competition, there is a trip into the mind of 16th century painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (The Mill and the Cross by Lech Majewski), a terrorist suspect on the run (Essential Killing, Jerzy Skolimowski) , a savage put-down of worker's protests in Communist Poland (Black Thursday, Antoni Krauze), a tale of possession in a Polish nunnery (In the Name of the Devil, Barbara Sass-Zdort), a cyberspace drama (Suicide Room, Jan Komasa) and an eighteenth century thriller based on the life of Poland's self-proclaimed Jewish Messiah, Jakub Frank (Daas, Adrian Panek). (nh/pg)
See interview with the festival’s artistic director Michal Chacinski here.