Urszula Śniegowska, the Artistic Director of the American Film Festival, recommends the following films from the program for the 17th T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival.
Preparing my top 10 was much more difficult this year-most of the new American films will be included in the program of the eighth American Film Festival in October. I can't wait, however, to see how audiences react to two American films:
A Ghost Story, by one of the most talented young directors working today, David Lowery; and
Menashe, a family drama filmed entirely in New York's Hasidic community, which is taking part in the New Horizons International Competition. Its post-production work was completed at Poland's Fixa Film as a result of the film's participation in US in Progress (during the seventh American Film Festival).
I also want to recommend two Works (with a capital W) from the Cannes Festival that offer a devastaing critique of modern post-capitalist society:
Ruben Östlund's The Square, an improbable satire about the art world; and
Michael Haneke's Happy End, an ironic portrait of the fallen bourgeoisie.
The following films are also definitely worth seeing (nearly all of them are about art and artists):
A Heart of Love, a fictionalized story about two contemporary Polish performance artists, Wojtek Bąkowski and Zuzanna Bartoszek;
Pierre Bismuth's Where Is Rocky II? about a missing artwork by Ed Ruscha;
Loving Vincent, an animated biography of Vincent van Gogh;
78/52, a documentary about the structure of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho;
Manifesto, a film performance that evades classification starring the amazing Cate Blanchett; and
the Portuguese film The Ornithologist, a poetic, dreamlike work based on events from the life of St. Anthony of Padua.