22nd and 23rd editions of MDAG Film Festival

ongoing

22nd and 23rd edition of the Docs Against Gravity Film Festival will take place in 7 major Polish cities (Warsaw, Katowice, Wroclaw, Poznan, Lodz, Bydgoszcz, Gdynia) at the same time on 32 screens. Dates: May 9-18 2025 in cinemas and May 20-June 3 2025 online for Polish IP numbers only. Respectively May 8-17 2026 in cinemas and May19-June 2 2026 online at mdag.pl. Festival holds 1-2 place of popularity among film festivals in Poland with over 165K audience showing dominantly European films in 2024. Festival recommends 3 films to European Film Academy and has gained recently status of Oscar nominating event. Festival gives away 17 awards with 9 awards in Warsaw and 7 awards in local competitions, in other cities. During the 2nd weekend of the festival, there will be screenings of 8 European films in another 20 smaller cities within the program of Weekend with MDAG Festival. There will be over 56% non-national films from Creative Europe countries in the program and at least 23 C.E. countries will be represented. Festival will host over 80 foreign filmmakers to meet with Polish audience during Q&A sessions in all 7 festival cities. Beside Q&A session, there are planned over 100 other events in all cities after screenings related to theme of the films: workshops, music events, photo exhibition, panel discussions Since 2020, equality of gender, has been executed in the following way: Films in main competition, so in the competitions in other cities have been directed by equal number of women and men. In overall program, the gender balance is almost reached. Festival industry program -MDAG Industry will take place May 8-May 12 and consist of pitching sessions with awards, lectures and networking events. Festival is co-financed equally by state and local government and by private sector. Festival team will try to overpass the scores of the last edition in terms of audience (165K) and marketing reach: AVE: 9 mill euro, NPS 82%, reach by own social media: 10 mill.