Urbaniak has no inhibitions
Some pretty strong words have been said by today’s guest of Tofifest, Michal Urbaniak, who plays the leading character in My Father’s Bike by Piotr Trzaskalski. There were many more occasions to feel emotions, though, for instance during the meeting with the leading actor from Taxi Driver.
The meeting with Michal Urbaniak attracted a large crowd of his fans, as the man is first and foremost recognised as a master of music. In My Father’s Bike by Trzaskalski, Michal Urbaniak has portrayed one of the main characters, Dziadek Wlodek (Grandpa Wlodek). The films tells a story about the problem as old as humankind itself, i.e. the searching for communication between father and son, and breaking the wall of silence between the men that are so close to each other. Urbaniak portrays the patriarch of the family, Artur Zmijewski plays his son and Krzysztof Chodorowski his grandson. The casting of Michal “Urbanator” Urbaniak as Grandpa Wlodek was a clear success, albeit it took a toll on the artist himself. “I was so devastated emotionally that I could not stop being the film’s Grandpa Wlodek for many long months. I needed to seek psychological help, to be able to become myself again,” Michal Urbaniak confessed during the meeting at Tofifest. When asked, whether he could identify himself with the strong words his character utters in the film: “A man can live his woman, but he is unable to abandon his own child”, he made a long pause and answered the quiet audience: “Is it not how it works?”. The new film by Piotr Trzaskalski is yet another example that cinema is a true reflection of our lives.
Sister by Ursula Meier, which is one of the films competing in the ON AIR competition for debut and second feature films, has been received very warmly. Meier won Tofifest 2009 with her Home and decided that her second feature film would also compete for the Golden Angel of Tofifest. The film attracts large audiences, since its stars Gillian Anderson (The X-files). She is not the most important element of the film, though. The two leading roles are portrayed by two young people. It is beautiful and talented Lea Seydoux and brilliant Kacey Mottet Klein, i.e. the title sister and brother. Both of them live in an ugly block of flats, in the suburbs. To make ends meet, the boy steals skiing gear from wealthy skiers, who come to a nearby ski resort. Ursula Meier presents a painful picture of the borderline between the bathed in sunlight white world of wealthy skiers and two siblings, who are trying to survive.
In the evening, there was a screening of Taxi Driver and a meeting with its director Ryszard Kruk and Mr Henryk Janicki, the main character in the film and a true legend among taxi drivers, in Torun. The screening and meeting took place at Baj Pomorski Theatre. The pretext to present Taxi Driver was the launching of the Ratujmy Filmowego Fiata! (Save the Film Fiat!) Campaign, organised by Tofifest and the Local Tourist Organisation. The nearly 50-year-old car has been parked in front of the festival’s centre, since the Opening Ceremony of Tofifest 2012. The goal of the campaign is to save this heritage of Torun’s cinematography from scrapping. The car shall be restored and adapted for the purpose of tourist promotion of the history of cinema in Torun, provided that we have managed to collect 3,000 PLN.
On Tuesday, the festival shall first and foremost focus its attention on “Big Zbig”. The meeting with Zbigniew Zamachowski, chairman of the On Air Jury and one of the greatest stars of Polish cinema, starts at 6:00 p.m.
We will also have an opportunity to see three more films of the On Air competition: Peddlers (Halahal) by Vasan Bal, an Indian thriller about the gangster underground in Mumbai; Made in Ash by Iveta Grófova, a Sloval and Czech film, telling a rather harsh story of young Slovak women, whose life ambitions are brutally verified by merciless reality; and For Ellen by Korean director So Yong Kim (USA), which is the last film of the competition on Tuesday. The main protagonist in the film is played by Paul Dano, who is famous for his outstanding performance in There Will Be Blood. The man played by Dano is trying to win back his 6-year-old daughter he has so recklessly abandoned and the story is set in cold and boundless scenery of America.
One of the main events of the day shall be the premiere of Michael Winterbottom’s “Indian” film Trishna. Another highly recommendable films are Wildlife (Kalayaan) by Adolfo Borinag Alix Jr., a calm story of Philippine soldiers, who are forced to stay on a lonely island in the ocean, and Shameless by Filip Marczewski (the FROM POLAND competition), which is a full length debut of the director who won the Silver Angel of Tofifest in 2005.
It is also worth seeing short films made by Bydgoska Kronika Filmowa (Bydgoszcz Newsreel), i.e. The Letter from the River and Black Sunday, which have been directed by duo Maciej Jasinski and Jaroslaw Piskozub, and win festival after festival.
The rarity of the day is the screening of the first Syrian film that has been selected for the main competition in Cannes, i.e. Waiting for P.O. Box (Falastein, Sandouk al Intezar lil Burtuqual) by Bassam Chekhes – the film participated in the SHORTCUT competition. The screening will be followed by a meeting with the director.
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