i guess the first time i went on vacation somewhere for a week alone?

30 Aug, 2026

It's already 4 weeks since the end of this year's edition of Nowe Horyzonty film festival in Wrocław, and I'm finally ready to post some recap of what I saw.

The most natural thing would be to end the post with a "would I go again?" section, but I kept wearing my festival pass on my work lanyard until this week¹. I think that speaks for itself. I would do two things differently: lose a bit more money on a less distant hotel (even if the walks were healthy for me), and find someone to hang around with. I had one occurrence of someone striking up a conversation with me randomly, the first morning after arriving. My gratitude for that (hope I remembered it right) Hungarian drama teacher knows no bounds, but it also set far a too strong expectation, as no one talked to me again the rest of the week.

I regret nothing about seeing 5 movies per day, that part rocked, and I didn't get a single headache all week? Maybe Wrocław just has better air quality, I don't know.

Movie-ing on to the movies:

the good ones

It would be incredibly dishonest of me to start with anything other than All of a Sudden (2026). Ryusuke Hamaguchi is a special director for me, as I credit Drive My Car with getting me into more auteur cinema. I don't vibe that much with his earlier work, and Evil Does Not Exist was good but often overstated. I'm happy to say, this went way beyond my expectations. It's a heartfelt drama, with two women talking a lot, a callback to mother-tongue theatre as seen in Drive My Car, and a soundtrack that I was quite convinced could be Eiko Ishibashi's until I found it was not. It cannot be a comfort movie for me the way Drive My Car was, and maybe I don't really want to see it again anytime soon. But that's alright, good even.

I also enjoyed Parallel Tales (2026), which is hitting Polish cinemas about now. This is an adaptation of Kieślowski's Dekalog 6, which I haven't seen, which is why I was one of the few people in the room who found the story interesting. The original story was, as far as I can tell, simple and more down to earth, while this is a convoluted multi-layered cake.

I was also blessed with two drastically opposite performances by Renate Reinsve. I am a fake fan who has not heard of her until Sentimental Value — I guess I have a bit of Joachim Trier to catch up on — but it was a delight to watch both Butterfly (2026), where she is the emo-punk-ier of two sisters unraveling the mystery and mysticism of their mother's death, and Fjord (2026, Grand Prix award in Cannes), a semi-courtroom-drama where she is a religious tradwife whose family is unraveled by the cold areligious Norway. I wouldn't say these are life-changing thought-provoking movies, but just very good watches, and they just couldn't be more different from each other, tonally and visually.

Finally, putting it in this section, because I can't fit in anywhere else, The Competition (2016), a documentary about the entrance exams for an elite film school in Paris. I think the main reason it resonated with me was that I see myself at a crossroads, and going back to school (not necessarily a film one, but who knows) has been on my mind. It shows the multiple stages in deep detail, including my favourite scene where a student applying for screenwriting is asked to draft in 40 minutes a concept around the sentence "And then she said, in a most natural voice, «But I too am a horse»".

the retro ones

Daguerréotypes (1975) honestly deserved the mantle of the good one, but that section was already pretty crowded. It's a French documentary by Agnes Varda, in which she presents the daily lives and personalities of various shopkeepers from the street she lived at. It works well as a heartwarming feel-good movie, but it also gets funny with editing and juxtapositions that I didn't expect from a movie this old (which says more about me, I'm sure).

Ulrike Ottinger's Paris Calligrammes (2020) is also a documentary, but a retrospective one, about her move to Paris in the 1960s and the various weird friends she made in the artistic community there. I had no idea who she was, and no idea who most of the people being name dropped were, but the movie starts with an excellent story hook that made me think "I can think of two friends of mine that exactly this would happen to". Also sometimes it's just nice to listen about the alternate universe where bookstores close at midnight.

I watched Nouvelle Vague (2025) in a pretty similar way. This is kind of a retelling of the filming of Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 debut Breathless. It's also heavy with name dropping that just didn't do much to me. I just treated it as a comedy about Godard's antics, and I had a decent amount of laughs from that. Since then, I've seen Breathless in a cinema in Warsaw, and it's nice that I was prepared for how rough that movie is, and helped me appreciate it more, though I think I'd rather rewatch Nouvelle Vague than Breathless².

the warm ones

Supporting Role (2026) was my opener for the festival, once I arrived Monday evening and checked into the hotel. It's a feature film following a former action movie star, who after years of absence, gets offered a very weird small role from a very hipster young director.³ I would liken it to a road movie, for a certain definition of road, as it veers into magic realism and a little mysticism. It also struck some similar chords as All of a Sudden with respect to society's treatment of anyone not in their prime or healthiest years. If you can stand the protagonist being something of an asshole, I think it pays off.

I'm putting it on the list next to I'll Be Gone in June (2026), another feature about a slightly rebellious highschooler going on cultural exchange to New Mexico just before 9/11 and watching the country unfold under the weight of it, though not enough to make her want to return home to East Germany early. I think I'm sentimental about how the movie felt, but don't remember anymore what exactly I wanted to praise it on, aside from my Letterboxd review that calls out a "surprisingly decent amount of trains" for a movie set in America.

I'm also sentimental about Days Yet Unknown (2026), a documentary retracing the director's family's steps as they ran away from Poland in 1980s to seek a better life in Austria. I was a little surprised by the level of detail as they reenact the journey as closely as they can, even driving a Fiat 126p across the borders. In the end I think it's less the universal story of refugees from Soviet Poland that hooked me here, and more the love radiating from making a movie with your mom, as she succumbs to dementia, trying to make her remember the letters she wrote.

the unjudgeable

I usually stay away from horrors⁴, and I just didn't realise I was walking into one when booking Chronovisor (2026). There is a lot to like in its visual fun, and even the running gag, and even with the use of Holst's Planetes for soundtrack. But the pacing felt really rough here, with many many many scenes being just translated into English words overlaid on top of some Italian documents, as the protagonist investigates a mystery lost to time. Just make a visual novel out of this instead, is what I thought.

I had higher hopes for The Unknown (2026), especially when its director Arthur Harari was name dropped in Q&A as one of the students of the director of The Competition, and also because of Léa Seydoux in it. What we got was a body swapping thriller, that only gets partially resolved. One big surprise was the inclusion of Jóhann Jóhannsson's IBM 1401, A User's Manual in the soundtrack, and music is one thing that goes consistently right here, along with some small comedy bits. At the same time, I felt uneasy throughout, and I still don't know how exactly to feel about it.

I also saw Paper Tiger (2026), a crime thriller starring Adam Driver in 1990s New York. It kept me hooked, but it's not really my genre, and it maybe felt like it was doing too many things at once. But I can't say that it was bad, for sure.

the trans ones

Moving on to a movie with a very honest name: Cyclone (2026) feels liek a run-of-a-mill trans story, set in Hong Kong, that ticks all the boxes including a metric ton of sex work with fairly graphic scenes, as well as (I'd prefer this as a content warning even if it's a spoiler) conversion therapy. I don't think this is a must watch, I certainly liked it better than the Polish Kobieta z..., and there's also a sense of warmth surfacing throughout the story, despite everything.

On the other end, Rose (2026) is not really a trans movie, but in some way it is – it definitely brings up the role of sex/gender in our social dealings. As an aspiring Sandra Hüller fan, I'm glad I saw it, though I don't think it's such a great and important movie all in all.

I dumped a more personal train of thought on A Sweetness from Nowhere (2026) into another blog and have nothing more to say about it here.

the Polish ones

All Our Fears (2021) is the movie I complained had too short subtitle durations. It tells a story of a rural modern artist struggling with connecting being a gay modern artist and being a devout Catholic. It would be a heavy watch (content-warning-wise) for someone queer. It is also a bit overstated and drawn out, but I still thought it was worth listening to.

Tell Me What You Feel (2026) instead tells a story of a rural-turned-Varsovian modern artist struggling with, well, a lot of things. It is by the same director as All Our Fears, but instead tackling the delicate balance between holding everything in and facing it all head on. There were a few very visually fun scenes, but other than that I spent most of the runtime wondering, am I out of touch with my generation, or are the dialogues written as the director's generation imagines my generation? This felt a bit drawn out as well, and interpersonal drama was cranked up a bit too far, so I think I would recommend All Our Fears instead if you want to sample the director. I also saw the trailer for it in cinema recently, and it was the blandest thing possible, showcasing every little thing that could surprise you positively when you watch.

the mismatches

I don't think Night Walk (2023) should've been put into the late night slot, but then again, I'm not sure it makes sense in the movie form, rather than say, an art installation. The reviews online are true: this is effectively a slideshow of city landscape recordings with poetry and doodles, in very very blue grading. I'm refusing to see this as a terrible thing, I just don't think it works in cinema.

Action Item (2025) is something I maybe should've liked for what it was trying to say (with my ongoing burnout this year), and I wholeheartedly enjoyed the initial bits and how they played with visuals and sound at the start. Sadly, the very same soundscape, which I claim is anxiety manifested itself, drained my energy and I slept through the talking bits.

The Lake (2025) is a largely wordless movie about people in a sailing race on a lake. I attended a Q&A and he seemed to answer a lot of questions with "see I made it so that everyone would come out with their own interpretations reflecting themselves". I'm not sure if I think that's a coward move or just not my thing.

the ones i'm not thinking about much

Joan of Arc (2025) is one for big Hlynur Pálmason fans. The Love That Remains was not his first movie that was interleaved with footage of his very own Hlynssons and Hlynsdóttir building something over a long period of time. Joan of Arc is just a companion mini (60 minutes??) movie serving as extended cut of just that. I accidentally scheduled this right after Cyclone and it was a massive tonal shift, and one that I desperately needed. Don't expect too much from it, then you can enjoy it.

That was a lot of text for what I claimed I have nothing to say about, which should offset the fact that I have really nothing to say about Songs of Forgotten Trees (2025). In my defence, it was the second to last day and my mind was turning to mush a bit.

9 Temples to Heaven (2026) could probably make it into the [[#the warm ones]], but I was maybe not in the best mind space to experience it. What stood out in it though was the scene towards the end when the sky gets dark, which is about as much as I'm willing to spoil. Very atmospheric and slow movie.

the disappointments

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning (2026) had a really well done title card sequence, depicting exactly what the title says, to heavy drum&bass music. And then what followed was a very run-of-the-mill story about lost millennials in admittedly shitty housing situations, and only 1 of 5 characters getting a chance at a character arc, the others falling into interpersonal drama that could've been in a soap opera.

But somehow I was more infuriated by Hot Spot (2026), by Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska. I haven't seen any of her previous work, which maybe would've informed my choice better. Hot Spot is a hot mess of cyberpunk noir fake-solarpunk. The planet is almost dead. Everyone's brains are connected to AI. You get a gummy bear and small sip of water per day, and somehow this is enough. The main character is a detective, who dresses maybe fittingly for Night City, but he lives in a Greek villa out of town (first thing that doesn't make sense in the setting), and takes a self-driving car (how is this optimal allocation of scarce resources?) to a train station, and then goes the last mile on a bicycle. The movie also veers into mystical fantasy vibe for something very important because why not.

I attended the Q&A with the director and a number of crew, but I left after a few minutes of very self-congratulatory chat. The concepts that feel unique here are at best a decade late, and they just don't mesh well together. On an audio/visual/editing level this is a workable picture, but the story feels like it just throws together a large number of MacGuffins (soylent, exploding heads, magical music), gives them coherent names, but not coherent meaning, and that just pissed me off. It feels like a very surface level exploration that doesn't deserve to call itself a possible future.