"The Dress" won the 45th edition of the Atlanta Film Festival!
"The Dress" – written and directed by Tadeusz Łysiak with cinematography by Konrad Bloch won at the 45th edition of the Atlanta Film Festival in the Best Narrative Short category! This event qualifies for theAcademy Awards in the Narrative Short category, which means that "The Dress" has a chance to qualify for the Oscars race next year.
Jury statement: "A gripping tale of transformative yearning, feminine friendship, and startling brutality. The film is evocatively shot, sensitively scripted, and anchored by a heartbreaking performance by Anna Dzieduszycka."
The Atlanta Film Festival is one of the largest and longest-running festival in the US, welcoming an audience of over 28,000 to discover hundreds of new independent, international, animated, documentary, and short films, selected from 8000+ submissions from all over the world. It is also the most distinguished event in its class.
"The Dress" tells the story of Julia, working in a roadside motel, whose life changes when she meets a handsome truck driver. Long-hidden desires make themselves felt. But this is not just the story of a woman meeting a man. Julia is physically different from the people around her, she is a person with short stature, which is why she struggles with rejection, loneliness and stigmatization. "The Dress" is a story about longing for normality, the need to meet the universal needs of closeness and warmth.
Starring: Anna Dzieduszycka, Dorota Pomykała and Szymon Piotr Warszawski.
The film's editor is Mariusz Gos. The production was supervised by Wojciech Saramonowicz.
The film has it's premiere at the 60th Krakow Film Festival in the National Competition. 'The Dress' also qualified for the Main Competition at Odense International Film Festival in Denmark, and the polish festivals - Kameralne Lato in Radom and Młodzi i Film in Koszalin. It was also presented at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Market.
The Atlanta Film Festival wasn't the first Academy Award qualifying event at which "The Dress" has been shown. The film has already been in the official selection of such prestigious festivals as the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, as well as in the Short Film Competition at the Moscow International Film Festival - one of the oldest film festivals in the world.
"The Dress" has already won at three other Oscar qualifying festivals:
- at last year's Bengaluru International Short Film Festival in the Let's Include category,
- at last year's Rhode Island International Film Festival the Grand Prize Best Actress went to Anna Dzieduszycka,
- at this year's IN THE PALACE Short Film Festival – the award for the Best Student Short Film.
The cinematographer - our cinematography student - Konrad Bloch received the Bronze Tadpole in the Student Etudes Competition during last year's Camerimage festival (he is the first student of the Warsaw Film School to receive this prestigious award) and the Heliograf company award at the 45th Polish Film Festival in Gdynia for the author of the best cinematography in the Short Film Competition.
"The Dress" – film poster by PLAKIAT
THE DRESS
SCRIPT & DIRECTING: Tadeusz Łysiak DOP: Konrad Bloch EDITOR: Mariusz Gos MUSIC: Jan Królikowski SOUND: Błażej Kafarski PRODUCTION MANAGER: Monika Ossowska ARTISTIC SUPERVISOR: Wojciech Saramonowicz PRODUCER: Maciej Ślesicki PRODUCTION: Warsaw Film School, Dobro, Miło – Post Production Studio, Głośno
Tadeusz Łysiak – born in 1993, graduate of Cultural Studies at the University of Warsaw, student of Directing at the Warsaw Film School. Creator of two award-winning short films in Poland and abroad: "Techno" (starring Leszek Abrahamowicz, Danuta Stenka, Michalina Olszańska) and "The Dress" (Anna Dzieduszycka, Dorota Pomykała, Szymon Piotr Warszawski). Participant of the prestigious program FUTURE FRAMES - Generation NEXT of European Cinema within Eastern Promises at the Karlovy Vary Festival. Winner of the "Discovering Eye" award for young talented filmmaker at the Polish Film Festival in Chicago.
Films by students of the Warsaw Film School are co-financed by the Polish Film Institute