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This year’s Spektrum Film Festival will open with Grzegorz Dębowski’s “What Belongs to Others”. The film had its world premiere in Venice on 9 September, where it received the Bisato d’Oro Award for Best Screenplay. What begins as the story of Kasia, who makes a living by burglarising apartments, gradually unfolds into a tale of loneliness, the need for human connection and the possibility of starting over.
The festival’s closing ceremony will feature a screening of Emilia Śniegoska’s documentary “Double Trouble”, a tender portrait of friendship between two women living in a dwindling Polish village in the Romanian Carpathians. With their children having moved abroad, Hanka and Bronka have become each other’s greatest source of support. This nostalgic portrait of a disappearing world combines understated humour with a deeply affectionate celebration of female friendship.
Spektrum is the heart of the festival. This year’s section brings together seven Polish and international films, spanning different genres and cinematic sensibilities. Festival audiences will have the opportunity to see Piotr Domalewski’s “Nasza rewolucja”, telling the story of Jacek and Grażyna Kuroń. The programme also includes “A Free Woman” by Eliza Godlewska and Alan Ruczyński, which follows Roma, a 50-year-old woman dreaming of a place of her own, whose repeated encounters with bureaucracy force her to fight for her dignity. Another highlight is Hirokazu Koreeda’s “Look Back”, an adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s acclaimed manga. The film competed in the main competition at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where it received five independent jury awards. The section also features Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The Beloved”, starring Javier Bardem and Victoria Luengo, Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal’s “The Assistant”, and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden”. The latter earned Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto a joint Best Actress award at Cannes for their performances. Rounding out the Spektrum section is Maciej Cuske’s acclaimed documentary “Candidates of Death”, chronicling more than a decade of summer holidays spent by the director, his son and two of his son’s friends making amateur horror films.
The Spektrum programme also features International Competition 1,2, dedicated to first and second feature films. The selection brings together bold, unconventional works that offer fresh perspectives on cinematic storytelling. Six films will compete for the award: “What Belongs to Others” (dir. Grzegorz Dębowski), the festival’s Venice-awarded opening film; “Gradiva” (dir. Marine Atlan), one of this year’s Cannes discoveries and a captivating portrait of youth; “Flesh & Fuel” (dir. Pierre Le Gall), a hopeful love story set in the world of truck drivers, which took home the Queer Palm Revelation Award at Cannes; “Hold Onto Me” (dir. Myrsini Aristidou), an intimate drama acclaimed at Sundance about an eleven-year-old girl trying to reconnect with her long-absent father; “Czas, który nie nadszedł” (dir. Julia Rogowska), a thought-provoking story about love, ageing and the attempt to stop time; and “No Ghosts on Good Street” (dir. Emi Buchwald), a tender and unconventional coming-of-age story about siblings, the bonds between them and their struggle to stay together despite their differences. The winner of International Competition 1,2 will be chosen by the festival audience.
The international Okiem Młodych competitions (Fiction, Documentary, Animation and Amateur) are at the heart of SPEKTRUM. Short films by young independent filmmakers will once again take over Świdnica, ranging from professional productions to debuts created outside traditional film schools. During the festival’s 12th edition, audiences will have the opportunity to discover as many as 44 films from around the world.
Trees for the Winners
The awards presented to the creators of Spektrum’s best films leave their mark not only in the form of statuettes, but also on the city of Świdnica itself. Since 2024, winners of The Youth Perspective competitions have also received trees, which become part of the Film Tree Map.
Each tree is accompanied by a plaque with a QR code that allows visitors to watch the award-winning film. It is a way of ensuring that the festival’s awards live on long after the final screening, becoming a permanent part of the city’s landscape. With each new edition of Spektrum, the festival’s trees continue to grow.
As every year, the festival will also hold a screening at the Świdnica Detention Centre as part of the Open Detention section. Festival audiences in Świdnica will also have the opportunity to see “Bigger Picture” (dir. Mikołaj Janik), a tender and humorous documentary about an artist struggling with a creative crisis who sets off into the mountains in search of the lost Panorama of the Tatra Mountains. For Arek Pasożyt, the quest to find this monumental work of art also becomes a journey towards reclaiming his independence and self-belief. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s protagonist.
The programme also features Marek Piestrak’s “The Curse of Snake Valley”, a cult Polish film that walks the line between unintentional absurdity and the wholehearted ambition of adventure cinema. This time, it will be presented with original narration by Łona. Written especially for the film, his commentary brings together irony and genuine affection for the original. The screening will also feature subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH), making the film more accessible to audiences with hearing impairments.
12th Spektrum
Film Festival
20-25 October 2026
Świdnica
