International Report From the Field with Cynthia Kane

Dragon forum pitch session.

The 49th Krakow Film Festival kicked off with Paul Mazursky’s Yippee: A Journey to Jewish Joy as its opening night film, which was followed almost immediately by the Polish premiere of UNMISTAKEN CHILD, an ITVS International co-production with filmmaker Nati Baratz who introduced the film to the jammed-packed theater with renowned Polish director Andrzej Wajda in attendance.

Now I must say I have admired Mazursky for a long time and even loved some of his films. This one was a lot of fun (and at times LOL-fun) watching Mazursky and gang travel to Uman in the Ukraine for Rosh Hashanah to celebrate joyously at the burial site of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the founder of Kabbalah. And might I add, slightly different in tone to UNMISTAKEN CHILD. By the end of the week, Nati was awarded the Best Documentary Feature Prize––the Golden Horn for “both an impressive, thorough and undoubtedly genuine and intimate” documentary about a Buddhist monk’s pursuit of the reincarnation of his beloved lama. A documentary “that transforms into a story about the mystery of human life, and a perfect combination of an attractive form and intimate portrait of a deeply believing monk and his relationship with the unmistaken little boy.”

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Tags: film festival, independent film, Krakow, Poland