MDAG Unveils 12-Film Main Competition for Oscar-Qualifying Grand Prix
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- Millennium Docs Against Gravity revealed 12 features competing for the Grand Prix – the Bank Millennium Award – with the winner earning instant Academy Awards qualification; the festival runs May 8-17 across seven Polish cities (Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdynia, Poznań, Katowice, Łódź, Bydgoszcz) and continues online May 19-June 1
- Karol Piekarczyk, MDAG's artistic and managing director, identified "searching" as the unifying thread — from a father's literal search for his missing son in Michał Marczak's Closure, to an Iranian teen's search for identity in A Fox Under a Pink Moon, to formal/experimental searches in Nuisance Bear
- The three-person main jury includes Oscar-nominated filmmaker Talal Derki (Of Fathers and Sons), Oscar-shortlisted Lea Glob (Apolonia, Apolonia), and Oscar-nominated producer Jessica Hargrave (Come See Me in the Good Light); a separate FIPRESCI jury will award a critics prize
- The lineup includes two-time Oscar nominee Maite Alberdi's A Child of My Own (a woman who faked a pregnancy under social pressure), Oscar nominee Sara Dosa's Time and Water (Iceland's vanishing glaciers), and Pieter-Jan de Pue's Mariinka (two brothers on opposite sides of the Ukraine war, with a third brother in a U.S. foster family)
- A new FIPRESCI Documentary Grand Prix debuts at the opening gala, honoring the best documentary of 2025 as selected by international film critics
- Local juries in other host cities will present additional awards: the Lower Silesia Grand Prix (Wrocław), Silesian Audience Award (Katowice), Mayor of Gdynia Award, City of Poznań Freedom Award, and Bydgoszcz Art.Doc Award
Why it matters: The Grand Prix gives international documentary filmmakers a direct, rare Oscar-qualifying path through a single European festival — a significant gatekeeping moment for non-fiction cinema. The debut of the FIPRESCI Documentary Grand Prix, honoring the prior year's best doc, adds a new piece of global critical infrastructure for the form, while the festival's expansion across seven Polish cities plus a two-week online window broadens its reach well beyond Warsaw.
