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Record-breaking attendance in cinemas and an excellent result for the online part of the festival. The 21st edition of Millennium Docs Against Gravity attracted a total of 165,255 attendees! This is over twenty thousand more than in 2023, when 144,483 people. participated in the festival.
Seven cities, dozens of additional towns as part of the Festival Weekend, followed by over 150 films presented on mdag.pl. during the second part of the festival. New sections, meetings with directors and protagonists after screenings, debates, unconventional accompanying events, and a VR experience section all contributed to the tremendous success of the 21st MDAG. Record-breaking cinema attendance was noted in Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdynia, Poznań, Katowice, Łódź, and Bydgoszcz. A total of 93,884 people watched the best documentaries from around the world on the big screen, surpassing the results achieved in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.
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Record-breaking results for the MDAG in cinemas
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For the fifth time, the festival was held in a hybrid format, combining 10 days of in-person screenings in cinemas (from May 10 to 19) with the online segment from May 21 to June 3. The cinema segment attracted 93,884 attendees in person. The online segment sold 41,983 e-tickets. Assuming that most people do not watch films alone, the online audience was actually larger. Festivals worldwide use a multiplier of 1.7. Therefore, a total of 71,371 people participated in the online segment. Altogether, the 21st edition of the festival had 165,255 participants. The online segment allows cinema enthusiasts outside the festival cities and people with disabilities, for whom getting to the cinema is challenging, to participate in the festival.
During the 21st MDAG, the Grand Prix – Bank Millennium Award was given to the film „No „Other Land” in the Main Competition. Local awards were also presented to the twelve competitors in the festival cities: the Lower Silesia Grand Prix in Wrocław, the Mayor of Gdynia Award, the Freedom Award funded by the city of Poznań, the Silesian Voivodeship Audience Award in Katowice, and the Bydgoszcz Art.Doc Award.
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Bank Millennium will remain the Titular Sponsor of MDAG for the next three years!
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Artur Liebhart, the director and founder of the festival, expressed immense gratitude to the Titular Sponsor of the event, Bank Millennium, which has consistently supported MDAG for 19 years: "This year, Bank Millennium decided to extend our collaboration for another three years. We are delighted that we share the same values and together create a space for discussion, exchange of views, and a closer understanding of the most important phenomena that are changing the face of our reality." The director and founder of MDAG also thanked the festival cinemas in all the cities, the audience, media patrons, and volunteers, whose efforts made such a large undertaking possible. Among the main institutions co-financing the festival were: the City of Warsaw, the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Polish Film Institute, the European Union's Media Program, as well as brands Visa and CANAL+ Poland.
Mateusz Góra, the head of communications and audience development, highlighted the growing popularity of MDAG: "The 21st edition of the festival saw a significant increase in attendance. Over 20,000 more people participated in our event than last year. We managed to attract more documentary film enthusiasts to cinemas than in 2019, which indicates that we can now speak of the end of the negative impact of the pandemic on in-person attendance. Over the past five years, the online segment of our festival has become an integral part of the event and enjoys as much interest as the cinema screenings. This helps us reach a wide audience with quality content and fulfill our educational role in every corner of the country.
We are also greatly pleased by the engagement of media patrons and the addition of new media outlets, which significantly contributed to the increase in advertising value equivalency (AVE) this year - it reached 39.9 million PLN, almost 10 million more than last year. This success is also due to the work of our invaluable PR head, Sara Wołczyńska, whose joining the festival team last year injected a true burst of new energy. Additionally, our social media activities have been particularly visible over the last two years, and this year we reached over 11 million people with MDAG's message thanks to Anna Kawula from Kawula Studio, who is responsible for our social media. Finally, the success of this edition was influenced by the consistent change in the festival's visual identity, designed for the second time by Bartek Bojarczuk from ill.cat studio."
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MDAG Industry - A Bridge Between East and West
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The latest edition of MDAG Industry activities also proved to be a great success. A total of 1,205 participants and 38 decision-makers from around the world took part in 15 events. Millennium Docs Against Gravity is becoming a creative hub connecting East and West, as mentioned by Anna Szczypińska, head of MDAG Industry: "This year, 20% more people participated in MDAG Industry compared to the previous edition, and the event is attracting an increasing number of industry representatives from around the world. Despite being only the third edition, we can clearly see that MDAG Industry is growing dynamically and fulfilling its goal of being an important event in the documentary market calendar. We also saw how fruitful it was this year to place a strong emphasis on training sessions for pitching participants, individual workshops for young projects from film schools, and masterclasses with renowned industry professionals. We aim for Warsaw and MDAG to become a place where the best projects from Poland, Eastern, and Central Europe are presented, and participants are well-prepared for discussions and presentations before buyers, festival representatives, and producers from the West."
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The dates of the 22nd MDAG
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The dates for the next, 22nd edition of Millennium Docs Against Gravity have been announced – the in-person cinema segment will take place from May 9-18, while the online segment will run from May 20 to June 2, 2025.
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