The 75th Festival de Cannes. And It’s Good That Łódź Exists

Film festivals. Great, renowned, steeped in tradition.

The Cannes Film Festival is the quintessence of the West and of its ability to absorb and assimilate everything at once. 

Side by side: the unfinished documentary Mariupolis 2, directed by Mantas Kvedaravičius (who died in Mariupol on 2 April, shot by Russian soldiers), and Top Gun: Maverick (directed by Joseph Kosinski). 

And in between, as at any festival: applause, acclaim. Which film will win, which will make an incredible impression and ‘pin us to our seats’?

It is good to return to Łódź after the festival. Łódź is like a link on the all-embracing East–West axis, a place where sooner or later we will all meet—all the fans of the twenty-first century’s cool world. In Łódź we feel both the power and the impotence of applause. Applause is a universal connector that masks a situation’s ‘awkwardness’. One has to stand firmly in Łódź for that awkwardness to reach the consciousness of us, the people clapping.

It had already reached us in Cannes. That is why we were still there, embracing Jurek Skolimowski. Atlas Sztuki made no secret of having a hand in Roman Polanski’s new film, whose screenplay was written by Jerzy.