Can we live without technology? How does it affect our everyday lives? We can try to find answers to these questions while watching films presented in the “Techno Party” section of Mastercard OFF CAMERA. During the 16th edition of the biggest celebration of independent and arthouse cinema in this part of Europe, the audiences will moreover have an opportunity to experience numerous adventures. The Festival Team has also announced selected films to be screened in the “Hello Adventure!” section.

Every year in May, Krakow hosts key figures of independent and arthouse cinema from around the world, film industry representatives and of course thousands of viewers. For 16 years now, Mastercard OFF CAMERA has presented productions that often could not be found on film posters. This year will be no different in that respect. Between 28th April and 7th May 2023, the Festival will showcase nearly 100 films from 30 countries.

The films have been grouped thematically into eight sections: four regular sections (including the Main Dramatic Competition “Making Way” with the Andrzej Wajda Krakow Film Award of USD 25,000 and the Polish Feature Film Competition with the Dominika Kulczyk & dFlights Award of PLN 100,000) and four new sections prepared for each subsequent edition of the Festival. This year, the Festival Team reveals the cards of the program well in advance and announces films to be presented in the next two sections: “Techno Party” and “Hello Adventure!”.

Techno Party – can we live without technology?

Technology has become an important part of our life, affecting almost every aspect of it. It’s hard to imagine everyday reality without a smartphone, computer or Internet. In this year’s section of Mastercard OFF CAMERA, we will explore the pros and cons related to an integral part of today’s world – the development of technology. This topic is no longer associated just with science fiction, since it is present in almost every film genre – starting from psychological dramas, through comedies to thrillers.

Films presented this year in Krakow in the “Techno Party” section include, among others, the following titles:

• The directors duo: Kaori Kinoshita and Alain Della Negra, in the film Perfect Boyfriend, takes us on a journey to the virtual world, to which a lot of men try to escape from real life with its full spectrum of emotions. All because of a virtual girl named Rinko – an attractive teenage character from a video game which is a huge hit in Japan.
• In her feature debut, young director Morgane Dziurla-Petit is expanding her 2019 short film. Excess Will Save Us tells an innovative and hilarious story about a rumor of a suspected terrorist threat, affecting the daily life of a small village in Northern France.
• Government program Plan 75 (dir. Chie Hayakawa) encourages senior citizens in Japan to be voluntarily euthanized after turning seventy-five. One of the arguments used in the program’s integrated advertising campaign, is to entice the elderly with the promise of a substantial amount of money to spend on whatever they like before they die. The film was Japan’s official entry for the Academy Awards.

Hello Adventure! – the great comeback of the “New Adventure Cinema”

The genre which has experienced a renaissance and great revival in recent years, even though it was always considered somewhat “worse”– – the New Adventure Cinema – reached its peak of popularity in the 1970s and 1980s. All of this thanks to mainstream creators such as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Robert Zemeckis, among others.

These type of films have recently been an inspiration for directors who weaned on the cult classic productions. This is clearly evidenced by the phenomenon of the Stranger Things series and the fact that Top Gun: Maverick has drawn crowds of viewers looking for extreme emotions and reminiscing fondly about the original hit with Tom Cruise..

Increasingly, the genre itself and the typical narrative patterns have been refreshed by the creators of festival and arthouse cinema. Krakow audiences will therefore have an opportunity to see in this section the following films:

• Stella (Nadia Tereszkiewicz, who won the César award for this role), a driven girl from a wealthy family, charismatic Adèle (Clara Bretheau) and talented but troubled Étienne (Sofiane Bennacer) in the film Forever Young by acclaimed European actress and director Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, dream about acting career. A nostalgic story from the late 1980s, full of extreme emotions, about students at one of France’s most prestigious performing arts academies – the Nanterre Amandier theater.
• Emad Aleebrahim Dehkordi in the film A Tale of Shemroon leads us into the world of modern-day Iranian society: its attachment to patrimony and traditional values, and the overwhelming desire for freedom. Brothers Iman and Payar, despite differences in their worldviews, share a close relationship, and they know that after the death of their mother, they need to figure out their way of life.
  
• Medellin, Colombia, a city associated with drug trafficking, corruption and violence, in The Kings of the World, is a place that forgives no weakness. . Nonetheless, good fortune finally smiles on the group of teenagers from Laura Mora Ortega’s film – one of the characters regains the right to the piece of land taken away from his family a long time ago. This somewhat surreal journey in search of happiness won recognition from critics and audiences around the world..
  
• The Pine Ridge Reservation in War Pony is a place where Bill, a young man in his twenties, and a decade younger boy named Matho – Indians from Lakota tribe – do not have a bright future ahead of them. They need to struggle against adversity that have become their daily life: economic crisis, poverty, unemployment, family dysfunction and exploitation. All that in the winner of the Golden Camera for best first film at the Cannes Film Festival, by directors duo: Gina Gammell and Riley Keough.

For detailed information on individual films presented in “Herstories”, “It Runs in the Family”, “American Indies” and “Best of Fests” sections, visit www.offcamera.pl. The entire program will be announced at the beginning of April.