We announce the Documentary Special Screenings of the 33rd edition of EnergaCAMERIMAGE Film Festival.
BEDROCK
Director: Kinga Michalska
Cinematographer: Hanna Linkowska
Produced by: Paul Cadieux, Ashley Duong, Danae Elon
Country and year: Canada, 2025
The film is a psychological journey through contemporary Poland, portraying the realities of those who live in sites of extermination. It takes viewers on a contemplative passage through landscapes where traces of violence are intricately woven into the fabric of everyday life. Bedrock reveals life in the shadow of the past, whose echoes still reverberate in a dystopian present, emerging from a mosaic of intimate stories.
THE EYES OF GHANA
Director: Ben Proudfoot
Cinematographers: David Feeney-Mosier, Brandon Somerhalder
Produced by: Breakwater Studios
Country and year: USA, 2024
The film follows the story of 93-year-old documentarian Chris Hesse – personal cinematographer to the forgotten African icon Kwame Nkrumah – as he races against blindness and time to rescue and repatriate a secret trove of more than 1,300 films that captured the birth of African independence in the 1950s and 1960s. As yet unseen by the public, these films may not only rewrite Ghanaian and African history but also world history itself.
THE GOLDEN SPURTLE
Director: Constantine Costi
Cinematographer: Dimitri Zaunders
Produced by: Hopscotch Films, Hytra Films
Country and year: UK, Australia, 2025
Once a year, participants from around the world descend on a picturesque village in the north of Scotland to compete for the title of world champion in… making porridge! In the documentary The Golden Spurtle, the fierce culinary rivalry conceals a warm, humorous story about eccentric locals, a living tradition, local heritage and a community one can’t help but want to join.
LAST TAKE: RUST AND THE STORY OF HALYNA
Director: Rachel Mason
Cinematographers: Craig Boydston, Halyna Hutchins, Oliver Lukacs, Michael Pessah, Olesia Saveleva, Serge Svetnoy, Corey Weintraub, Dennis Zanatta, Daniel Zollinger
Produced by: Craig Boydston, Halyna Hutchins, Oliver Lukacs, Michael Pessah, Olesia Saveleva, Serge Svetnoy, Corey Weintraub, Dennis Zanatta, Daniel Zollinger
Country and year: USA, 2025
On 21 October 2021, on the set of the film Rust, a prop gun held by actor Alec Baldwin fired a live bullet, wounding the film’s director and killing its cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. Within hours, the catastrophic accident was enveloped by a frenzy of media attention. For months, then years, as lawsuits flew and criminal trials unfolded, the tabloid spectacle around the case overshadowed a private, personal tragedy. In this documentary, Halyna’s friend, director Rachel Mason, goes beyond the public narrative to reveal the untold human story of that terrible day and all that followed, from the vantage point of the people at the centre of events.
LETTERS FROM WOLF STREET
Original title: Listy z Wilczej
Director: Arjun Talwar
Cinematographer: Arjun Talwar
Produced by: Uni-solo Studio
Country and year: Poland, Germany, 2025
Arjun emigrated to Poland from India over a decade ago and still struggles with a sense of alienation. In an effort to bridge the gap between himself and an anxious country, he begins filming his neighbours, uncovering a mosaic of hidden stories, shared longings and fascinating characters. In doing so, he realises that the Warsaw address they share binds them like an invisible thread, offering solace amid the melancholy of everyday life. From the just-over-a-kilometre-long Wilcza Street emerges a portrait of contemporary Europe, and Poland, often perceived as unfriendly and conservative, which receives a tender, wryly humorous portrayal through the director’s lens.
MEGADOC
Director: Mike Figgis
Cinematographer: Mike Figgis
Produced by: Ellie Film MegaDoc, Red Mullet Productions
Country and year: USA, 2025
A raw, fly-on-the-wall documentary about Francis Ford Coppola’s decades-long journey to create his self-financed passion project, Megalopolis. The bold, unrelenting epic re-emerges in Mike Figgis’s portrait of Coppola’s creative process, weaving together archival material, unfiltered cast interviews and a close-up view of how the legendary filmmaker drew on Roman history, political allegory and his own singular vision to shape the world of Megalopolis. This isn’t a record of a production on the brink; it’s a personal memoir unfolding in real time.
MENSCH
Director: Paweł Wysoczański
Cinematographer: Bartosz Bieniek
Produced by: Black and White Productions
Country and year: Poland, 2024
Mensch is the first feature-length documentary about Ludwik Hirszfeld – a doctor, scientist and idealist. The film includes previously unseen archival material and contributions from leading Polish and international scientists, while re-enactments help transport us into the world in which he lived. Yet this is no cinematic hagiography. Hirszfeld was never a monumental figure. He was a man close to people – he worked with them and lived for them.
A TEDDY BEAR FOR MICHAEL
Original title: Miś dla Michaela
Director: Grzegorz Zasępa
Cinematographer: Grzegorz Hartfiel
Produced by: Tiburon Film Media, for TVP World 2024
Country and year: Poland, 2024
A powerful and emotionally charged documentary that tells a story of heroism, sacrifice and an unbreakable human bond. The film recounts the true events of 28 August 2013, when US Army Staff Sergeant Michael Ollis gave his life to save Polish Lieutenant Karol Cierpica during a deadly Taliban attack on the Ghazni base in Afghanistan. Ollis, just 24 years old, made the ultimate sacrifice, shielding Cierpica from a suicide bomber in a moment of instinctive, selfless bravery.
UNDERLAND
Director: Rob Petit
Cinematographer: Ruben Woodin Dechamps
Produced by: Sandbox Films
Country and year: USA, UK, 2025
We know so little of the world beneath our feet. To most, it is a place only of fear and darkness, though for a brave few it is one of knowledge and wonder found nowhere else. Based on the best-selling book by Robert Macfarlane, Underland is a cinematic documentary that voyages into worlds rarely glimpsed by human eyes. Beginning in the shallow soils beneath an old ash tree, we travel alongside several ‘astronauts of the underworld’ into ancient sacred caves, flooded storm drains, melting glaciers, underwater burial chambers and a deep underground laboratory built to solve the mysteries of the universe.