A Cinema of Many Gazes:
A Conversation with Ewa Szabłowska, Artistic Director of the mBank New Horizons International Film Festival
The 24th edition of the mBank New Horizons International Film Festival arrives under the motto “Cinema That Leads,” celebrating cinematic diversity and venturing beyond the well-trodden paths of traditional film.
● Interviews
Aleksandra Sadulska: What does this year’s 24th mBank New Horizons International Film Festival motto, “Cinema that leads,” mean to you?
Ewa Szabłowska: The slogan itself was inspired by one of our festival sections, Let’s Go, which is dedicated to the philosophy of walking. Walking is an act we tend to take for granted, but in the realm of art, film, and literature, it becomes something deeply significant—an individual, performative, and democratic form of movement. This theme finds its reflection in the accompanying exhibition Steps, which invites interaction and movement. Spread across three galleries—Entropia, BWA Studio, and Krupa Gallery—it encourages festivalgoers to physically journey between them. Additionally, the participating artists will lead walks, offering an artistic lens on the city. It’s a fascinating initiative that allows you to discover Wrocław from a fresh, festival-driven perspective. I’m in love with this part of cinema where emotion is tied to movement, and walking becomes a way to map one’s inner self.
More broadly, the slogan can be loosely interpreted as a nod to cinema that takes us places. New Horizons is a festival dedicated to films that aren’t obvious—they can be challenging and demand a certain effort from the viewer. But when you allow yourself to be guided, they can take you to truly unpredictable places, just as a filmmaker leads an audience through their world.
This year’s retrospective of Yvonne Rainer fits perfectly with the theme. She’s an American choreographer and theorist whose seven films were recently restored by the Museum of Modern Art. Rainer radically transformed the practice of contemporary dance. She believed dance was a form of movement accessible to all and often staged performative actions rooted in collective walking. That physicality, and her choreographic background, is present throughout her films—especially The Performance of Life. For me, she’s emblematic of the kind of filmmaker New Horizons is drawn to: one who deconstructs what cinema can be, blending disciplines and working across a vast artistic spectrum.
AS: Each year, the mBank New Horizons International Film Festival presents the most talked-about titles from other major festivals around the world. What can we expect from this edition?
ES: You’ll be able to see all the major films from Cannes, Berlinale, and Venice. One that I highly recommend is The Beast, based on a novella by Henry James, which premiered in Venice. Its director, Bertrand Bonello, is also the focus of one of our retrospectives. He’s an extraordinary French filmmaker—an heir to the New Wave, whose French cinematic style is filtered through a Lynchian imagination. The film spans three timelines, forming a kind of transgenerational love story set across two decades. It follows a romance that transcends incarnations and reaches into a futuristic world. The main character, played by Léa Seydoux, undergoes a process of emotional cleansing—like a sensory deprivation chamber—to erase memories from her past lives. The present-day timeline imagines a future where artificial intelligence has become autonomous and emotions are viewed as obstacles.
We’ll also be showing Dahomey, directed by Mati Diop—one of this year’s featured retrospective filmmakers—which won the Golden Bear at Berlinale. Another highlight is Crossing by Levan Akin, which opened the Panorama section. It tells the story of a middle-aged Georgian woman who travels to Turkey in search of her niece, a transgender woman. It’s a profoundly humanist film that raises crucial questions about the society we live in. It shows that understanding between conservative families and progressive individuals is possible, but it takes effort and a willingness to see from another perspective. It’s a beautiful, heartfelt film.
We’ll also screen Matteo Garrone’s Io Capitano (Me, Captain), which tells the story of African refugees—from an African perspective.
AS: What are the challenges in curating a program that’s so open and diverse?
ES: It’s a collaborative effort involving several people—it’s really the result of a group of curators, endless film-watching, and continuous dialogue. Beyond the jointly developed sections, there are also individual curatorial strands where one person dives deep into their own cinematic world. For instance, the Yvonne Rainer retrospective was curated by Ula Śniegowska, while I curated the Bertrand Bonello retrospective. There will also be a retrospective of Nagisa Ōshima, put together by Marcin Pieńkowski and Łukasz Mańkowski.
The festival also has a cultural mission. We show major titles that don’t always get distribution in Poland because they’re too niche. We bring global cinema here and give audiences the chance to experience it in a shared space.
AS: New Horizons is known for having one of the most engaged festival audiences. Do you think that’s because the shared experience of watching films in a cinema has become increasingly rare?
ES: I think this really comes down to the idea of community—and the experience of watching films together. The festival creates a kind of triangular connection between audience, film, and filmmakers. Viewers aren’t left alone with the film; at the festival, they get the bonus of the director being present—someone they can ask questions or even confront. That’s a huge value of the festival experience, but also of collective viewing in general—people laugh or sigh at the same time, and that creates a sense of doing something together.
Watching films on streaming platforms—which many say is killing cinema culture, not just at festivals but more broadly—is a completely different experience.
AS: Does your personal, feminine perspective find expression in the festival program?
ES: The section closest to my heart—and one that definitely reflects a feminine lens—is Third Eye. I wanted to create a section that would engage with feminist theory and practice, as well as related areas like social critique and philosophy. It’s a relatively small section, with around six to ten titles each year. This time, I drew inspiration from Jess Zimmerman’s book Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology. The book has rich cinematic parallels thanks to its focus on female monsters, both in genre films and in classical mythology.
I hope this section weaves together multiple thematic threads and brings feminist ideas to a wider audience in a way that’s both accessible and thought-provoking. Among this year’s highlights is Love Lies Bleeding by Rose Glass—a kind of contemporary take on Thelma and Louise, centered on the romance between two women, one of whom is a bodybuilder. It opens up reflections on the female body and standards of beauty. Another is The Devil’s Bath by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, which explores female depression in various historical and social contexts, asking us to consider what defines monstrosity—and whether women are its victims or its agents within a given societal system.
AS: With nearly two hundred titles in the program, is there any common thread that runs through the festival?
ES: It’s such a vast festival that I think its diversity is its greatest strength. Each section—curated by a different person—reflects their individual interests and passions. For example, the Bonello retrospective or the focus on female monsters touches on themes of the body and the understanding that the mind can be a dark abyss in which one can easily get lost. The walking-themed section can be seen as both therapeutic and contemplative, resonating with the ideas of slow cinema. Even urban wandering, which might seem more suspicious or uneasy, shares a common ground with walking in nature—they both express a kind of pleasure.
The section on African New Waves, curated by Jan Topolski, presents films from the 1970s by African directors inspired by the aesthetics of the French New Wave, aligning beautifully with the processes of decolonization. All this shows that identities and biographies are complex—and the festival’s sections communicate with one another in compelling ways. Just like the festival’s slogan suggests, you can let yourself be guided and explore different paths, navigating the festival through various lenses and creating your own branching narrative.