The programme of the combined New Horizons IFF and the American FF includes five films that FIXAFILM has worked on. This online event will be taking place from November 5 to 15.
Due to the pandemic, this year’s editions of the New Horizons and American Film Festival have been merged and transferred onto the Internet. Our restoration of the Parajanov Triptych will be presented in the Masters section at New Horizons. The Triptych consists of three rarely seen short films by the legendary Sergei Parajanov. They were recently presented as part of the Summer programme of Film at Lincoln Center in New York. Kiev Frescoes, Hakob Hovnatanyan, and Arabesques on the Theme of Pirosmani were restored by FIXAFILM as part of the Hamo Bek-Nazarov Project, with the support of Kino Klassika, the Armenian National Cinema Centre, the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre, and Georgian Film. The Parajanov Triptych was curated by our frequent collaborator, the British filmmaker and programmer Daniel Bird, and the restoration was supervised by Łukasz Ceranka.
We did the postproduction on Simple Things, directed by Grzegorz Zariczny and produced by Before My Eyes. This second film from the director, who debuted with Waves at Karlovy Vary IFF in 2016, will be part of the New Horizons International Competition. Our COO Andrzej Łucjanek was responsible for the production.
The American Film Festival programme includes three films on which we collaborated with filmmakers from the USA. The Special Docs section will feature Hopper/Welles, a documentary made up of footage shot by Orson Welles in 1970. It is a remarkable conversation between the director of Citizen Kane and Dennis Hopper, who was at that time celebrating his moment of glory after the success of Easy Rider. The film was produced by Filip Jan Rymsza and edited by Oscar-winner Bob Murawski (The Hurt Locker). FIXAFILM co-produced the film and took care of restoring and post-producing footage that had been locked away and abandoned for almost 50 years. Łukasz Ceranka supervised the restoration, and Wojtek Janio was responsible for the production.
The Spectrum section will include My Heart Will Beat Only If You Tell It To, the feature-length debut of Jonathan Cuartas. This horror drama tells the story of siblings who reach a crossroads over what to do about the mysterious illness of their brother, Thomas. The film was produced by Dualist, in cooperation with Film Exchange, and we did the postproduction – Małgorzata Grzyb worked on the colour grading and visual effects together with Maciej Sankowski, while Wojtek Janio was responsible for conforming, mastering, and postproduction coordination. My Heart… won awards at this year’s Tribeca Festival and SITGES in Catalonia.
Last, but not least, is Sanzaru, directed by Xia Magnus and also to be presented in the Spectrum section. This debut, produced by Oneonetwosix Films, premiered at this year’s Slamdance Festival. The thriller tells the story of Evelyn, a nurse who begins to question her own sanity while caring for an elderly woman suffering from dementia in a remote house. The chilling atmosphere of the film, inspired by Asian horror, is accentuated by Mark Khalife’s cinematography, and it was colour graded by Małgorzata Grzyb from Fixafilm.
The joint edition of New Horizons and the American Film Festival will begin on November 5 and run for 10 days. The films will be available to viewers in Poland via an online platform, and tickets will be on sale from October 27.