Xavier Henri-Rashid’s London-based cinematographic sales agency has inked multiple territory deals on “F*cking Bornholm,” a scathing comedy of social discomfort. The film had its international premiere in the main competition section of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, where it won the Europa Cinemas Label Award.
In its review, Variety’s Guy Lodge commented that Polish writer-director Anna Kazieczak’s “nuanced and brilliant film deserves wider festival exposure and discerning attention from distributors.” Now acquired by Iceland’s Bio Paradis, Germany’s Arsenal, Austria and Switzerland’s, Lithuanian Garsas, Slovenia’s RTV, Israel’s Yes and Sweden’s Lucky Dogs. The international trailer debuts below.
In the film, a married couple with children goes on a short vacation to the Danish island of Bornholm. Everyone has different goals and expectations, and each one of them and their relationships will be tested.
Lodge described it as “a dark, distinctly uncomfortable comedy from Poland that ditches the male abuse, entitlement, and boredom of laughter that comes with an accompanying wince—while strongly linking his sympathies to a renegade wife and mother, wonderfully played by Agnieszka Grochowska.”
Added Lodge: “With its cool comic tone, elegant formal composure and orchestral scoring flourishes to accompany measures of mounting awkwardness and emotional injury, ‘Fucking Bornholm’ is likely to put many art-patrons in the minds of Swedish defender Ruben Östlund – in particular, his standout film “Force Majeure”, which covered similar thematic terrain of masculine absence and irresponsibility in the bourgeois family unit.
Besides Grochowska, the film stars Maciej Stuhr, Grzegorz Damięcki, Jasmina Polak, and Magus Krepper.
Produced by Marta Lewandowska, screenplay written by Philip Kasperaszyk and Kazyjak. The production company is Warsaw-based Friends With Benefits Studio, which was set up in 2019 by Lewandowska, Kazejak and Kasperaszek. Her first production was the first Polish original Netflix production “Erotica 2022”. The FWB movie “Roving Woman” premieres to the world in June at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Kaziak attended the Polish National Film School in Łódź and, with two friends, produced the film Ode to Joy about the economic emigration of young Poles. The film won the Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Gdynia Film Festival, and was shown in competition at the Rotterdam Film Festival.
She made her feature directorial debut with “Flying Pigs”, which became a box office hit in Poland, her third feature film “The Word” premiered at the Berlinale in the Generation section, and has been shown in over 40 international film festivals. She also directed several episodes of the Polish version of “In Treatment” on HBO.
