Cineuropa sat down with Karol Piekarczyk, artistic director of the Millennium Docs Against Gravity film festival, to discuss highlights of this year’s programme, growing audience interest in documentary cinema, as well as its place in the film industry. The Poland-based gathering unspools between 10 and 19 May in cinemas and will continue online from 21 May till 3 June. 

“In relations to the world” is a theme of this edition of Millennium Docs Against Gravity. What can we expect of the programme?
I think this year’s festival has several topics that are interesting for filmmakers and for the audience. We have a special section, called Unforgettable Female Stories, that talks about women who achieved a lot in different fields, be it football, architecture, photography or other arts, but for some reason their accomplishments were not recognised but instead set aside or even erased from history by a patriarchal society. This notion is illustrated very well in a film from this section, which also screens in the International Competition, I’m Not Everything I Want to Be [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Klara Tasovska – about Libuše Jarcovjáková, whose photographs hadn't been recognised for decades and only recently found acclaim. Another section is dedicated to First Nations – they tell stories of indigenous people from different regions of the world who often have to deal with a colonial past, or who are at the forefront of the fight against climate change. Their stories are very symbolic and great metaphors for the world we live in. The highlight of this section is the international and European premiere of Sugarcane, which was awarded this year at Sundance. 

The attendance at MDAG is steadily growing. More and more people want to watch documentary films. How do you explain that growth?
There are probably quite a few factors. The festival itself has grown, but at its core it has always been about the quality of the films. Our audience knows that if they see ten films, they will enjoy most of them. People then recommend the festival to others, so it’s kind of a snowball effect. What I think is one of our greatest achievements is that we've formed a community of people, who want to watch amazing films together and then talk about them after the screening – be it with filmmakers or with each other, standing on the steps of the cinema. We offer a varied programme, from more mainstream films to archival screenings and more avant-garde and artistic works. There are also lots of additional events, debates, workshops, photo exhibitions or concerts. I think the fact that we have a lot to offer is a big factor in the festival's growth. And what is extremely vital is that the team working on the festival is very dedicated, they are incredible people and they make the event run smoothly and therefore more enjoyable to attend. 

You’ve been the artistic director of MDAG for years. Many things have changed in the industry over the years, even the sheer amount of the films being produced. What is your main challenge in your daily job?
There are some challenges of course, like maintaining the quality of the programme. Although I hold the position of artistic director, I don’t see myself as someone who makes decisions by himself. Team work is important, I like that collectiveness, we cooperate choosing films, and my job is to highlight and remind ourselves of what our audiences are looking for or how we can positively challenge them. As you say, there is an abundance of films, and sometimes we have to decline films from filmmakers that we know and whose previous work we’ve shown, but we are all adults here and this is how it is. Speaking of filmmakers: we invite them and offer them a great experience at the festival, but we also help them promote their films. We don’t do PR just for the festival, but also for each individual film. The topicality and the variety of the films means that this is the way to go, to focus on each of them in a different way.

Documentary cinema is gaining more and more recognition, winning A-class festivals like the two latest editions of the Berlinale. Do you think that non-fiction films should compete against narrative ones?
I’m very much for it, especially when it comes to big awards like the Academy Awards and the European Film Awards. It would be good to no longer have only a separate documentary section. We are still waiting for the first documentary nomination in a Best Film category at the Oscars, there were a lot of rumours that Flee [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Jonas Poher Rasmussen
scheda film] or All The Beauty and the Bloodshed could get it in recent years. Recognition for these filmmakers is important, and that’s one thing, but it’s also important to remember that documentary is not a genre as such, like the comedy or the thriller. Documentaries can have genres too – they can be crime films, love stories, or be very surrealist. The more people understand that it’s just a tool to make a film, and that even if it has a lower budget than some fiction films it can be a great production and cinematically captivating, the better. Some people say that in fiction films, there is only a limited set number of stories that are being retold all the time. In documentary cinema, unique stories are infinite.