Tauron Fest's U.S. in Progress: Pipeline for American Indie Cinema
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Tauron American Film Festival will run its 17th edition Nov. 17-22 in Wrocław, Poland, with director Ula Śniegowska noting the event has shifted since the pandemic away from market presentations toward production system understanding and post-production contacts.
- U.S. in Progress, the festival's industry sidebar, enables up to five American-Polish collaborations per year, and producer Tristan Scott-Behrends calls it 'an essential part of the fabric of American independent cinema.'
- Director Rob Rice attended three times and used the lab to connect with Polish post-production studio XANF on 'Ponderosa,' starring Alexis Bledel and shown at Tribeca; fellow participant Pete Ohs shot his Charli XCX-starring 'Erupcja' in Poland.
- Recent U.S. in Progress alumni successes include Katarina Zhu's 'Bunnylovr' (with Rachel Sennott), which Zhu credits the lab's grants and Fixafilm/XANF partnerships for allowing her to finish, plus Georgia Bernstein's Sundance thriller 'Night Nurse' and Liz Sargent's 'Take Me Home.'
- Jane Schoenbrun, whose latest film 'Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma' opened Un Certain Regard at Cannes, and India Donaldson (now working on A24-backed 'The Chaperones' after 'Good One') are both U.S. in Progress alumni.
- Śniegowska said she aims to position Polish post-production companies as competitive with similar studios in the Czech Republic and Hungary, citing Wrocław's hospitality as a key differentiator.
- Submissions for U.S. in Progress open in July, with manager Monica Semczyk highlighting a recent New York reunion for alumni filmmakers to reconnect stateside.
Why it matters: As American indie budgets tighten and similar labs grow rarer in the U.S., U.S. in Progress has become a critical finishing-funding pipeline: filmmakers cite its grants and Polish post-production partnerships as the factor that let them actually complete films like 'Bunnylovr.' Five collaborations per year is the program's stated capacity, and Śniegowska is explicitly positioning Polish studios against Czech and Hungarian competitors.
