Polish Competition - set I

Sugar, spice, and everything nice. 
These were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect girls. But the professor accidentally added another ingredient to the mix – Chemical X! 
And thus, the Nonbinaries were born. Aware of their extraordinary powers, Butterfly, Beezy, and Lady Popular decided to dedicate their lives to fighting binary divisions and restoring the nonbinary order of the world.  

Niko Płaczek (b. 1999) – performer, filmmaker, director, and writer. Graduate student at the Łódź Film School, specializing in animated film and special effects. Since 2019, she has co-organized events and performed for the queer community in Poland. In collaboration with designer Yasia Khomenko, she created a performance for the exhibition "Helena Bohle-Szacka. Interpenetration" (2021, CMW in Łódź). In 2023-24, she choreographed performances combining film and movement for the ANIMATOR festivals in Poznań. Her performances have been showcased in clubs and galleries, including Kannski Gallery in Reykjavik, the Municipal Arsenal Gallery in Poznań, and Club Milonga during the Dragan Bar by the KEM collective (with Kamil Wesołowski and Wojciech Grzegorzek). As a performer, she appears in the works of Marta Ziółek and Kacper Szalecki. Her latest film, Niebinarki (2024), was featured in the exhibition "Get over it" (2024) at the CSW Kronika in Bytom. She lives in Warsaw.  

“The Pool or Death of a Goldfish” is a story about a possessive relationship between a mother and her daughter. The main character, through unexpressed anger and rebellion against her mother, transforms into a titular goldfish. Unspoken words, gestures, and repressed childhood emotions manifest in harsh treatment of both herself and others. The film is framed by a compositional structure in which the main character finally allows herself to feel grief, thereby entering a process of self-acceptance and forgiveness.  

Daria Wiktoria Kopiec. Film and theater director. A graduate of the Directing Department of the Theatre Academy in Warsaw and the Film School in Łódź at the Cinematography Department, specialisation: Animation and Special Effects. Trainee at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels – La Cambre in Brussels. Member of the Polish Filmmakers Association. Participant of the Berlinale Talent Campus 2017 program. She made internationally acclaimed animated films "Cosmos" 2016 (Annecy, main competition) and “Your Own Bullshit” 2019 (USA Austin, SXSW, jury special mention). She gained recognition in the theatre community with her play “The Daughters of Lear”, appreciated by audiences in many countries, and the television theatre „The Rita G. Affair” 2018 (Grand Prix at the TEATROTEKA FEST festival). Currently, she has finished work on the plasticine animation “The Swimming Pool or Death of a Goldfish” and is finishing the live-action short “It's All Because of Her”.  

Fantastical machinery, warmed up and boiling from hard work, due to temperature it evolves into an organism, then multiple organisms, which then build an ecosystem. Fauna and flora dances to the sound of liveliness.  

Wanda Nejman is a fifth-year student in Animated Film at the Łódź Film School. She is the author of short films such as „Tyle słów ile znam” (2024) and „Nie chcę więcej grać w twoją głupią grę” (2022). Previously, she was a student at the Łódź Academy of Fine Arts and a character designer for the series „Jak zostałem superłotrem” directed by Krzysztof Ostrowski.
 

“The Nature of the River” is about the similarities between a woman's mental state and the states/life cycles of the river. This is a movie about a human relationship with nature, about the wiseness of its cyclicality, about instinct and wildness that each of us carries within us. We are part of Pure Wild Nature. 

Born in 1989 in Białystok, Poland. A 2016 graduate of the University of Fine Arts in Poznań at the Faculty of Animation. Animated film director, visual artist, screenwriter, animator, cutouts maker. She specializes in animation techniques under camera animation with the usage of ground coffee. She exhibited her works at over 80 animated film festivals in Poland and abroad, and received a number of awards and distinctions. The artist received multiple scholarships from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage and the President of Białystok. She creates her own animated films as well as opening credits for festivals and multimedia theater scenography. She cooperates with art galleries, theaters, cultural centers and musicians, as well as conducts workshops for children and adults in animation, cutouts and other visual arts. Together with her partner, she runs the Handicraft Gallery – Kombajnat Artystyczny. She enjoys making cutouts with a scalpel, which is a hobby that takes up more and more of her time.  

When one box’s dreams of becoming a parcel are ruined, an unruly cat appears in his life, trying to make a new home inside of him.  

Damian Tchórzewski is a 3D animator and modeller residing in Poland. He obtained a master's degree in graphics, specializing in 3D animated film in 2024, at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. He was selected for the best graduate of MCSU's Faculty of Arts, and his film was chosen as the best diploma of the academic year 2023/2024. While studying, he was also working as a freelance 3D and 2D animator. His passion lies in animation and design of characters and environments, sometimes also sculpting (digitally or with modelling clay) and amateur voice acting. "Packed Up" is his graduation film.  

I was born in the seaside city of Gdynia in 2000. In 2023, I completed my Bachelor's degree at the University of Arts in Poznań, creating puppet animation. I am currently a Master's student at the Animation Department of FAMU in Prague. 
Animation is a medium that allows me to express thoughts and feelings that are often difficult to convey with words. I enjoy working with my hands, like painting, sculpting, and drawing, and one of the biggest advantages of animation is that it allows me to combine all these different forms of art into one cinematic work.  

Bird droppings. To most, a nuisance. But for a remarkable flock of flightless birds, they are the foundation of life itself. There is harmony in their hidden world – until one day when a mysterious object washes up on shore. What begins as curiosity sparks a profound shift, leading the flock into a new era of cultural and technological change. Once happy with simplicity, the birds now face the price of progress.