New Horizons Film Festival


New Horizons Film Festival is an international film festival held annually in July in Wrocław, Poland. It has been organised since 2001. It is one of the biggest and most popular film festivals in Poland. Since 2008 it is accredited by FIAPF with an "avant-garde" specialised competitive status.
The event is organized by the Stowarzyszenie Nowe Horyzonty. The moving spirit and the director of the festival is Roman Gutek. T-Mobile mobile phone network operator was a nominal sponsor of the event until 2017.
Festival presents mainly arthouse cinema. The most important from the several competitions held at the festival is the "New horizons international competition". It aims to present bold, unconventional and uncompromising films that are searching for the new forms of expression – "the new horizons of cinema". Prizes in the competition are: the Grand Prix, special mentions, and Audience Award. Since 2010 also a FIPRESCI Award is awarded.
Another important sections of the event are: retrospectives of the greatest film authors, experimental filmmakers and national cinemas, panorama of the most important auteur films of the season, "Midnight madness", and thematic sections.

Festival history

After the first edition, organized in Sanok, the Festival was moved to Cieszyn, where it was held four times between 2002 and 2005. From 2006 the event takes place in Wrocław. Since then it has apparently spread and now it is frequented by number of cinephiles and hosts many important guests every year, including Theo Angelopoulos, Šarūnas Bartas, Leos Carax, Nick Cave, Dardenne brothers, Lav Diaz, Bruno Dumont, Asghar Farhadi, Terry Gilliam, Amos Gitai, Peter Greenaway, Hal Hartley, Agnieszka Holland, Naomi Kawase, Abdellatif Kechiche, Kim Ki-duk, Andrey Konchalovskiy, Sebastián Lelio, Lou Ye, Dušan Makavejev, Tsai Ming-liang, Nanni Moretti, Cristian Mungiu, Ulrike Ottinger, Carlos Saura, Béla Tarr, Peter Tscherkassky, Agnès Varda, Andrzej Wajda, Vincent Ward, and Andrzej Żuławski.
In 2016, when Wrocław was holding the title of European Capital of Culture, festival included events related to this occasion.

New horizons international competition winners

Grand Prix

At the beginning the festival's Grand Prix was an audience award, but since 2009 it is given by the International Jury. The first main prize selected that way was awarded to Steve McQueen's Hunger.
YearTitleDirectorCountry of originnotes
2002Paradox LakePrzemysław Reut / chosen by audience
2003DollsTakeshi Kitanochosen by audience
2004A Common Thread Éléonore Faucherchosen by audience
2005TarnationJonathan Caouettechosen by audience
2006The Sacred Family Sebastián Lelio chosen by audience
2007Potosi, le temps du voyageRon Havilio / chosen by audience
2008Rain of the ChildrenVincent Wardchosen by audience
2009HungerSteve McQueen / the first Grand Prix chosen by International Jury
2010Mundane HistoryAnocha Suwichakornpong
2011AttenbergAthina Rachel Tsangari
2012Thursday till SundayDominga Sotomayor Castillo /
2013Celestial Wives of the Meadow MariAleksei Fedorchenko
2014White ShadowNoaz Deshe / /
2015LuciferGust Van den Berghe
2016In the Last Days of the CityTamer El Said / / /
2017WesternValeska Grisebach / /
2018HolidayIsabella Eklöf / /
2019BaitMark Jenkin

Audience award

Since the main prize became jury-selected in 2009, the Audience Award is the second in importance. The last Grand Prix chosen by the audience was Rain of the Children in 2008. The only films to win both Grand Prix and Audience award was White Shadow in 2014 and Bait in 2019.
YearTitleDirectorCountry of origin-
2009OxygenIvan Vyrypaev-
2010Le quattro volteMichelangelo Frammartino-
2011Brownian MovementNanouk Leopold-
2012DonomaDjinn Carrénard-
2013Floating SkyscrapersTomasz Wasilewski-
2014White ShadowNoaz Deshe / / -
2015Goodnight MommySeverin Fiala, Veronika Franz-
2016Wszystkie nieprzespane noceMichał Marczak-
2017PhotonNorman Leto-
2018An Elephant Sitting StillHu Bo-
2019BaitMark Jenkin

Festival programme 2009