Warsaw Film Festival 2026: A Polish Grand Prix, and Mumbai on the Screen

The 42nd edition of Warsaw Film Festival, which showcased 190 films, 132 features and 58 shorts, across 330 screenings, 102 of them world, international or regional premieres, was indeed a treat for cinema lovers. Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut, starring Julianne Moore, and Hans Petter Moland’s Growth of the Soil opened the festival. Danny Boyle’s Ink, Paul Greengrass’s The Uprising and Paolo Strippoli’s The Spiral were the Centrepieces. John Trengove’s The Smell of Apples, a South African-Dutch-Chilean adaptation of Mark Behr’s 1993 novel about a sheltered white boy who gradually grasps the horrors of apartheid, closed the festival. A quiet Polish drama about a woman who steps into a stranger’s life took the top honour at the 42nd Warsaw International Film Festival, which ran from October 9 to 18. Grzegorz Debowski’s What Belongs to Others won the Warsaw Grand Prix, worth PLN 120,000 (about 27,450 euros), at the awards ceremony on Saturday, October 17.

Debowski’s film, which premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti section, won over the jury with its delicate storytelling, its performances and its non-judgemental portrait of a woman who finds a chance to remake her own life by assuming another person’s identity.

The International Competition spread its honours widely. China’s Cai Chengjie took Best Director for Suzhou Quartet, which runs four stories side by side in a reflection on life and mortality. Maria Debska received the Special Jury Award for her performance in Maciej Sobieszczanski’s Through the Wall, a black-and-white love story between two young political prisoners during the Stalinist terror; the film also won the FIPRESCI critics’ prize. Jens Sjögren’s Swedish entry Bloody Men earned a Special Mention.

Albanian director Lorin Terezi’s Agia won the 1-2 Competition for first and second features, and PLN 10,000, for its portrait of a young woman resisting patriarchal tradition. Urša Menart’s Everything That’s Wrong with You received a Special Mention. In the Documentary Competition, Jonas Spriestersbach’s Meanwhile in Namibia took the main award, with María Molina Peiró’s Like Any Other Mortal commended.

India on the Warsaw screen

India’s link to this year’s festival came through a Polish lens. Kamathipura Express, a half-hour student short by Leon Korzynski of the Warsaw Film School, was shot in Mumbai and screened in the festival’s Best Shorts from Poland section.

The film follows Osa, a young Pole living in Mumbai, played by Oskar Karos. He meets Sapna, a dancer played by Mia Paul. When her father tries to sell her into a prostitution network, the two flee across India. Indian actor Vipin Sharma is in the cast. The title points to Mumbai’s Kamathipura district, but the crew judged that filming inside it, on a student budget, carried too much risk.

The competition drew 2,972 entries from 894 institutions, and the win is the Warsaw Film School’s first Student Academy Award. It also makes the film eligible for the live-action short category at the 99th Oscars. Gold in the same category went to Stanzin Jigmet, a filmmaker from Ladakh, for The Dragon Letter. Leon Korzynski says he wants to turn Kamathipura Express into a feature.