The In Situ Contemporary Art Foundation invites you to Sokołowsko for the 15th edition of the Hommage à Kieślowski Film Festival, taking place from 27 to 30 August 2026.
This year’s edition has a special significance. Fifteen years of festival encounters with Krzysztof Kieślowski’s work coincide with the 30th anniversary of his death and the 60th anniversary of his film debut. It is an opportunity both to look back and to ask how Kieślowski’s cinema continues to resonate with the present and with new generations of viewers and filmmakers.
The 15th edition of the Festival has been granted the Honorary Patronage of the European Film Academy. This distinction has a particularly symbolic dimension – in 1988, Krzysztof Kieślowski received the Academy’s first main award for “A Short Film About Killing”. Today, the EFA is extending its patronage to a festival devoted to his work and legacy.
During the Festival, there will also be an official unveiling of the “Treasures of European Film Culture” plaque on the building of Kino Zdrowie. The plaque commemorates the inclusion of the Krzysztof Kieślowski Archive in the prestigious European Film Academy initiative highlighting places and collections of particular significance to European film heritage.
“Man on the Border”
The theme of this year’s Festival is “Man on the Border” – understood broadly in existential, social and spiritual terms.
The jubilee edition is a moment of looking back, but also an attempt to grasp what is still to come. An important context is the concept of “metaxy” – a space “in between”, so characteristic of Kieślowski’s cinema: between realism and metaphysics, certainty and doubt, moral judgement and its suspension.
Programme of the 15th edition
The Festival will open with a screening of contemporary films inspired by materials from the Krzysztof Kieślowski Archive. The programme will include, among others, a new film by the Quay Brothers, “Postscriptum. Ruminations on My Craft”, as well as a presentation of the animated film “The Deer”, directed by Izumi Yoshida and based on an unrealised screenplay by Kieślowski.
The programme will also feature “The Scar”, shown on the 50th anniversary of Kieślowski’s theatrical debut, accompanied by the short film “The Slap”. The Festival’s main screening will be “The Double Life of Véronique”, followed by a meeting devoted to memories from the making of the film.
To mark the 60th anniversary of “The Office”, a special section entitled “The Office Full of Documents” has been prepared, exploring one of Kieślowski’s earliest documentaries and materials connected with its production.
The programme also includes the main section “Man on the Border”, New Polish Cinema, Polish-Czech Film Dialogues featuring a retrospective of Zbyněk Brynych, as well as Hommage à Kondratiuk, marking the 10th anniversary of the director’s death and the 90th anniversary of his birth, with a screening of “The Spindle of Time”.
Audiences will also be able to see a selection of some of the most interesting documentaries from the latest edition of Millennium Docs Against Gravity, as well as films presented in the section “Maria Kieślowska’s Favourite Films”.
An important point in the programme will be the final of the 3rd Short Film Competition, which received nearly 200 submissions. The Grand Prix, Special Awards of the Polish Filmmakers Association and the Feature Film Studio in Wrocław, the Audience Award and the Maria Kieślowska Distinction will all be presented.
The film screenings will be accompanied by exhibitions – including photographs by Marcela Paniak and Piotr Jaxa, as well as an exhibition by the Czech Centre in Warsaw devoted to Franz Kafka – together with theatre performances, including “The Border” by the Grotowski Institute, and a reading of materials from the Kieślowski Archive performed by actors from Nowy Teatr in Warsaw. The programme will also feature meetings and panel discussions under the Festival tent by the Palm House.
Sokołowsko – Kieślowski’s place
For fifteen editions, Hommage à Kieślowski has taken place in Sokołowsko – a town closely connected with the director’s biography. Kieślowski spent part of his childhood here, watched some of his first films at Kino Zdrowie, and years later returned to make the documentary “X-Ray”.
Today, thanks to the work of the In Situ Foundation, Sokołowsko is a place where the memory of the director meets living artistic, educational and archival activity.
It is here that the Krzysztof Kieślowski Archive operates – a space dedicated to collecting, cataloguing and making available materials connected with the director’s life and work. The Archive, the Festival and Sokołowsko together create a space in which Kieślowski’s legacy is not only preserved as memory, but continues to inspire new conversations, interpretations and encounters.
Sokołowsko
27-30 August 2026
Festival passes for the 15th edition are available via Going.
See you at the 15th Hommage à Kieślowski Film Festival!