The Special Award - Remote Culture has been granted by the ‘Polityka’ weekly during Annual Polityka’s Passport Gala for the very first time. The award went to the founder and Millennium Docs Against Gravity Director – Artur Liebhart.
This wonderful honour has been a great summary of a ground-breaking festival’s edition of 2020 that took place in a hybrid formula – the cinema and online platforms gathered over 170 000 viewers! Millennium Docs Against Gravity has therefore become one of the biggest Polish film festivals and the biggest film festival organised in the Polish history!
In the explanation for granting the Special Prize - ‘Remote Culture’ we can read: ‘For a quick response and working within extremely difficult film festival environment. For the success that has not only been maintained but expanded, for creating the digital distribution platform and for being an excellent example for others.
Regardless of what the future holds Millennium Docs Against Gravity Festival 2020 edition’s motto was ‘out of tenderness towards the world’ and ‘Lessons of Love’ - a story of a 70-year old woman who decides to leave her husband and starts her life from scratch directed by Małgorzata Goliszewska and Kasia Mateja has opened the festival last year. We desperately needed hope and faith that can change everything for the better then and it is also needed now’.
Artur Liebhart - awarded with the Special Prize in his acceptance speech emphasized the role of his entire team: ‘I accept this award on behalf of the whole festival team that helped with bringing it together. I want to express my hope and I believe we all share it that I will be the last person accepting this award and our culture will come back to the place where it used to be. I am taking this moment to thank our partner – Bank Millennium who has been supporting us over the last 16 years and The Warsaw City Council for always acknowledging our significant role on the city’s cultural map. I would like to thank all our partners in different cities that help us create a community of all seven festival parts. I want to invite you to our 18th festival’s edition, for the first time - a grown up one!’.
Future for the festival team looks bright. The 2021’s edition will also take place in a hybrid formula, furthermore in December 2020 a digital platform VOD.MDAG.PL where viewers can find most acclaimed documentaries from previous editions as well as some arthouse feature films has been set up. Therefore Millennium Docs Against Gravity has been on all year long meeting its most important goals – popularizing the culture of cinema, education within the field of documentaries but most of all showing extremely interesting, wise and very moving stories to the widest possible audience.
