The Cannes wave reaches Łódź. Winners and discoveries at the 17th FKA.
The Cannes Festival remains one of the most important places where the directions of world cinema are set. The program of the 17th Kamera Akcja Festival includes four more films from this year’s edition, created by creators who consistently expand the boundaries of auteur and genre cinema.
One of them will be “Everytime” by Sandra Wollner, awarded the main prize of the Un Certain Regard section – the third full-length film by the author of “On the inconvenience of birth” (2020). The director once again examines memory, absence and the uncertain boundary between what is experienced and what is imagined. Gregory Oke, the cinematographer of the Oscar-winning “Aftersun”, is responsible for the visual layer.
Festival-goers can also look forward to “La Gradiva” – the feature debut of Marine Atlan, winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prix at Cannes. Atlan, previously acclaimed primarily as a cinematographer (“Girl in the Snow”, “Drama Queens”), turns her camera on a group of twenty young people standing on the threshold of adulthood. The film brims with energy, flirtation, and curiosity, capturing the sense that something new is beginning. Yet, “La Gradiva” is more than just a film about youth. Atlan juxtaposes spontaneous observations of her characters with the story of the titular Gradiva –a figure from a novella by Wilhelm Jensen who gained fame through Sigmund Freud’s analysis. Amidst the ruins of Pompeii, the present intertwines with the past, and the holiday atmosphere gradually shifts into a journey into the depths of desire, imagination, and the subconscious.
Hirokazu Koreeda’s “Sheep in the Box” (originally titled “Kūki Ningyō”) – which premiered in the Cannes Main Competition – is also coming to the 17th FKA. The Palme d’Or winner (for “Shoplifters”) turns to science fiction this time but remains faithful to the questions that permeate his entire body of work: what truly constitutes a family, and can intimacy be recreated through technology? The film was inspired by reports of companies using generative AI to create digital replicas of the deceased. Koreeda was particularly intrigued by the question of who owns the memories and likenesses of those who have passed away. Meanwhile, the film’s original title – “Hako no naka no hitsuji–, or “Sheep in a Box” – alludes to “The Little Prince” and the drawing of a box in which a longed-for sheep is hidden through the power of imagination.
Rounding out the quartet of Cannes selections is Jane Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma“, starring Gillian Anderson (“The X-Files”, “The Crown”) and Hannah Einbinder (“Hacks”). Premiering as the opening film of the Un Certain Regard section and winner of the Queer Palm, the film adopts the tropes of the classic slasher movie to explore how the images we consume in our youth shape our desires and identities. As David Sims notes in “The Atlantic”, by blurring the boundaries between past and present, as well as fiction and reality, Schoenbrun crafts a penetrating diagnosis of life in the 21st century. Following the internet-based horror “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” and the television-centric labyrinth of “I Saw the TV Glow”, Schoenbrun turns their attention to cinema itself, completing a trilogy about the search for the self.
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.
