The third edition of the Amsterdam Polish Film Festival (October 18-20), organised in collaboration with Polish Culture NL, will focus on Agnieszka Holland. With her poignant, empathetic, and often politically charged films, Holland (1948) is one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers in Polish and European cinema.
On the closing day of APFF we will screen two recent films by Agnieszka Holland: the Holocaust drama In Darkness (2011) and Spoor (2017), Holland’s adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, in which an eccentric woman takes on the local hunting association. The films will be put into context by journalist Dore van Duivenbode and writer Bibi Dumon Tak.
Programme
15.00 – 17.30: In Darkness
19.30 – 20.00: Talks with Dore van Duivenbode and Bibi Dumon Tak
20.00 – 22.10: Spoor
About the films
In Darkness is a harrowing drama based on true events involving Leopold Socha, a Polish sewer worker and petty thief in Nazi-occupied Lvov (today Lviv, Ukraine). Initially motivated by money, Socha hides a group of Jewish refugees in the city’s underground sewer system to protect them from the Holocaust. Over time, his motivations shift as he forms a deep emotional bond with those he is hiding, risking his life to keep them safe.
Spoor is a dystopian fable (based on Olga Tokarczuk’s novel Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead) that follows Janina, an eccentric elderly animal rights activist who becomes increasingly disturbed by the local community’s hunting culture. Trying to look for her missing dogs, she encounters a misogynistic society of ruthless and corrupt men. When a series of mysterious murders of prominent hunters and authority figures occur, she believes the killings are the work of animals seeking revenge, but the local folk dissmiss that as crackpot theories from a crazy old woman. Blending elements of mystery, crime, and environmentalism, Spoor explores themes of justice, the clash between humans and nature, and society’s treatment of the vulnerable.
About the speakers
Dore van Duivenbode is a Dutch-Polish journalist and writer. In 2018 her book Mijn Poolse huis, Vakanties naar Auschwitz was published.
Bibi Dumon Tak is a Dutch writer. She mostly writes childeren books. In 2021 she published In een groen knollenland. Een schotschrift tegen de jacht.
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