Scholarship for a Polish Director

Rafał Kapeliński, a young Polish director and scriptwriter living in London won a prestigious scholarship in Cannes, France. The scholarship is meant to cover costs of work on his latest Project „Up on the Roof”.

The screenplay is one of the six screenplays that have been awarded the scholarship. They were selected from amongst many hundreds applications from all Europe.

Cinefondation Residence is a programme sponsored by Cannes festival and it belongs to one of the most prestigious programmes of the type in Europe. Gilles Jacob, the festival President presides the jury every year. The jury selects 12 young filmmakers from all Europe and enables them to spend almost five months in Paris, where supervised by a mentor they develop their long project.

Taking part in the programme is not only an opportunity to finish the screenplay with the supervision of the best professionalists (Kapeliński’s mentor will be Bruno Dumont, a famous French director, known for unforgettable “Life of Jesus”), but also to get European producers and distributors interested in the project. All finished projects from the programme will have their premieres at Cannes festival.

“Up on the Roof”  is a story, full of surprising turns of action, about a Polish emigrant in Dublin, about being lost, forgiveness and love. “Of course I am very happy”, says Kapeliński. “It is a great opportunity for my project, which will be my full-length debut. I am aiming at making an intriguing film full of whispers and shouts, sadness and joy, a film that will break stereotypes about Poles aborad.”

The film will be produced by Grand Pictures, one of the leading production companies in Ireland and Braidemade Films (UK) and Aurora Film Production (Poland). Premiere is planned in 2010.

Undoubtedly  Rafal Kapeliński’s previous films: „Emily cries” and „A ballad about Piotrowski”, which had international success contributed to his success. Especially “Emily cries” won many important awards at such festivals as: Oberhausen, Austin, Brest (The Best European medium-length film in 2007) and Gdynia (Grand Prix in Independent Competition in 2006).

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