Award-winning and unexpected. High-profile titles from international festivals at the 17th FKA
Films that made headlines at Cannes, Berlin and Sundance will arrive in Łódź this October as part of a series of special advance screenings. The 17th Kamera Akcja Festival will present three titles that take audiences into distinctly different cinematic worlds.
Screened in competition at Sundance, “Extra Geography” is the feature-length debut of Molly Manners, the acclaimed director of the TV series One Day and In My Skin. Minna and Flic don’t just finish each other’s sentences – they move, gesture and fill the frame as if they were a single organism. Screen newcomers Galaxie Clear and Marni Duggan make an electrifying duo, joined by Alice Englert (Beautiful Creatures, The Power of the Dog). Early-2000s retro aesthetics, cheeky humour and a keen eye for psychological detail give Extra Geography the energy of the very best coming-of-age stories. The film will be screened in partnership with the Ale Kino! International Young Audience Film Festival, and an introduction before the screening will invite audiences to take a closer look at its cinematic language.
Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes, “A Dream’s Dream” by Valeska Grisebach is an unsettling story of desire, power and relationships between women and men in a world governed by entirely different rules. Grisebach (Western) once again turns her camera towards the Bulgarian borderlands, where observational realism meets the western, crime fiction and local myth. Glances, gestures and seemingly innocent encounters gradually reveal tensions that defy easy definition or resolution. The director leads viewers between the real and the imagined, refusing to let them take sides too easily. Rather than closing the story with a single answer, this is cinema that opens it up to further questions. “These are exactly the kinds of films we look for at Kamera Akcja: films that don’t offer audiences ready-made answers, but instead spark conversations about the language of cinema and the boundaries of genre,” says Przemek Glajzner, the festival director.
Honoured with a Special Jury Prize at the Berlinale, “The Loneliest Man in Town” by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel (Vera, La Pivellina) is a moving story of loneliness, the passage of time and a world that is leaving us behind at an ever-faster pace. Legendary Austrian musician Al Cook plays himself – a colourful, charismatic figure with a story, memories and music of his own. The problem is that the contemporary world doesn’t quite know what to do with him. While the world races towards progress, career success and constant self-improvement, the protagonist remains where he is. Bulldozers appear around him, and the familiar neighbourhood begins to disappear, making way for a new reality. Al Cook becomes a piece in a puzzle dictated by profit and change – someone who no longer fits into the modern world and is simply starting to get in the way. It is a story about how easily we can forget, in pursuit of the next goal, that life doesn’t wait. And that one day, we may wake up alone – in a world that has already moved on.
The 17th Camera Action Festival will take place from October 22 to 25, 2026, in Łódź, and online from October 19 to 21, 2026, on the Think Film platform. This project is made possible thanks to funding from the City of Łódź’s budget. It is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund—a state-administered special-purpose fund—as well as by the Polish Film Institute and the University of Łódź, the festival’s patron. The “Sound Direction” section is organized in collaboration with the Łódź Film School and the Embassy of the Kingdom of Spain in Poland. Filmweb is a partner of the section. The festival’s main partners are Monopolis, the Łódź Film School, and the Museum of Cinematography. The Camera Action Festival and the “Man in Danger” Media Festival form the “Łódź Film Festival” network.
