Venice Charms Montreal Panel

Jan Jakub Kolski, whose recent films include an adaption of Gombrowicz’s Pornografia, has won the Special Jury Prize at the Montreal Film Festival. The director scooped the award for Wenecja (Venice), a film that explores the loss of childhood innocence during the Second World War.

Kolski’s film is based on a short story by Włodzimierz Odojewski (b. 1930), a writer who defected to the West in 1971, later working for Radio Free Europe.

Wenecja tells the story of Marek, a young boy from a landowning family who dreams of travelling to the city of lagoons. When war breaks out, his dreams, and the future of his class, are thrown into jeopardy.

“My aim has been to show in my short stories and novels a world that has passed by, so that it does not fade from our memories as well,” Odojewski reflected.

Wenecja was also a winner at this year’s Polish Film Festival.

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