‘The Female Age’ was curated by three members of the AGE-C project, Asja Makarević (Goethe University Frankfurt), and two members of the Faculty of Theatre and Film, Babeș-Bolyai University, Andrea Virginás (associate professor) and Boglárka Angéla Farkas (PhD student). The programme was further supported by the highly esteemed Romanian film producer Ada Solomon, who produced the selection’s Child’s Pose (Poziția copilului, Călin Peter Netzer, 2013). An extract of her endorsement interview can be watched on this link.

Accompanying the selection, the curators also wrote an article, which presents the included films and can be accessed here. The film programme will remain available until the beginning of April to all EFA members on the European Film Academy’s VOD platform.

*The poster was designed by Rebeka Hatházi, doctoral student, Faculty of Theatre and Film, Babeș-Bolyai University.

The jury’s comment: “In this film, the director masterfully uses an experimental cinematic approach to portray the story of a family and their journey through time and memories. In this journey, the camera works like a witness, and it transitions between characters and sometimes blinks to create a visual language that breaks, all the time, the line between reality and illusion.”

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival is one of the most important events in the European cinema and reached the 29^th edition this year.

Piotr Forecki, professor, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland

24 November 2025, Central, Cluj-Hub, 3^rd Floor, 11-13.30

Screening of the film Ida, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, 2013.

Introduction and Discussion.

25 November 2025, Central, 4^th Floor, Seminar Room, 14-16.00

Lecture.

Screening of the film titled “Przy torze kolejowym” (By the Railroad), directed by Andrzej Brzozowski in 1963.

Discussion.

Lecture abstract

Between the end of World War II and the late 1980s, the Polish film industry produced nearly twenty films about the Holocaust that approached the topic within safe boundaries. These films, which were allowed to be shown, did not threaten the national community’s good feelings, did not address Poland’s version of antisemitism, and most importantly, avoided the sensitive topic of Polish society’s attitude toward Jewish persecution. Each film aligned with the existing historical policy, which either used this issue instrumentally or ignored it altogether. After 1989, both historiography and cinema began to explore topics that were previously forbidden, taboo, or distorted in official state narratives. With the end of political restrictions and the start of open public debate, Polish cinema initiated a delayed process of reckoning and revising Holocaust memories. But has this process truly taken place? Have Polish filmmakers genuinely worked to dismantle myths, fill in gaps, and correct distorted Polish memories of the Holocaust? This brief speech aims to examine how the memory of the Holocaust has been shaped in Polish feature films since 1989.

Bio

Piotr Forecki is a professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. He has held scholarships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure at Yad Vashem. His research focuses on how the Holocaust is portrayed in popular culture, especially in films and comics. He also studies anti-Jewish violence in post-war Polish history, antisemitic discourse, right-wing populism, and memory studies.

3-5 September 2025

Faculty of Theatre and Film, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

]]>