From Warsaw to Sundance and then from Sundance back to Warsaw — that’s the journey awaiting the haunting and visually stunning film Closure by Michał Marczak. The director first presented the project during the MDAG Industry pitching session in Warsaw. Now Sundance, the world’s leading celebration of independent cinema, has announced that the film has been selected for its World Cinema Documentary Competition. In May 2026, Polish audiences will see it for the first time at Millennium Docs Against Gravity.
Closure follows Daniel, who scours the depths of the Vistula River after his teenage son goes missing, torn between the dread of a fatal leap and the hope that his son may still be alive. The film’s Polish premiere will take place at Millennium Docs Against Gravity. The festival will run from May 8–17 in cinemas across seven cities and then online at mdag.pl from May 19 to June 1.
Sundance describes Marczak’s film as follows:
“The Vistula River is hauntingly transformed into a purgatory for grieving father, Daniel, as he painstakingly scours each of its winding turns, pulled between the uncertainty of life and death in his search for any trace of his missing son, Krzysztof. Director Michał Marczak intuitively lets his camera drift between the placid surface of Poland’s longest river and the murky secrets of its depths, mirroring the stoic façade and inner tumult of a father torn between hope and grief. As weeks stretch into months and years, Daniel’s search slowly expands beyond the physical realm, and into the digital world, when he begins to chart the darkened halls of his son’s online footprint in an effort to understand how systems of connectivity can lead a generation to the abyss of isolation.” (author: JH)
“I have no doubt that Closure will be one of the most important Polish films — and one of the most unique documentaries — of 2026. Michał Marczak has found a cohesive yet piercingly beautiful cinematic language for this extraordinarily moving story. This bone-deep, haunting film stayed with me for a long time and captivated me with its thoughtful and striking visual storytelling,” says Karol Piekarczyk, Artistic Director of MDAG, commenting on the Sundance announcement.
Michał Marczak is one of the most intriguing filmmakers of his generation in Poland, well known to MDAG audiences. He studied directing at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, philosophy at the University of Warsaw, and photography at the University of the Arts in Poznań. He is also a graduate of the Wajda School and a member of both the Polish and European Film Academies. His artistic projects often inhabit the borderland between documentary and fiction, blurring the line between observation and creation. He gained international attention with Fuck For Forest (2012), a film about a group of eco-minded contemporary hippies who raise funds to save the Amazon rainforest by selling erotic videos. The film screened at MDAG, IFF Rotterdam, Thessaloniki, and SXSW in Austin.
His hybrid documentary-fiction film All These Sleepless Nights (2016), in which he followed two protagonists through Warsaw’s nightlife, won the Directing Award at Sundance. Marczak’s first feature-length film, At the Edge of Russia (2010), set in a remote military outpost in northern Russia, earned distinctions at several international festivals, including the top award at Millennium Docs Against Gravity and the HBO Documentary Films Emerging Artist Award at Hot Docs in Toronto.
Now Marczak returns to Sundance with Closure, which will compete for an award in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.
The 23rd edition of MDAG will be held from May 8–17, 2026 in cinemas in Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdynia, Poznań, Katowice, Bydgoszcz, and Łódź, and from May 19 to June 1 online at mdag.pl. The festival’s title sponsor is Bank Millennium.
