Transatlantyk Festival

2020’s Main Theme

The theme of the Festival’s jubilee edition, which will be held in Silesia for the first time, is “Transformation – Awakening or Just an Upheaval”.

Is the experience of the pandemic a plague about to cause humanity to fall or is it an opportunity for a new beginning? How will it change the world around us? What will endure, what will undergo a transformation, what will vanish completely? But above all, will the changes be permanent, or will the last months’ events turn out to be just a temporary upheaval? In the autumn, the Festival’s viewers will have an opportunity to ask themselves these questions, naturally evoked by the pandemic, by means of the cinema.

According to Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, the Founder and Director of the Festival: „When choosing a theme for each edition, it is our tradition that we look for up-to-date, ambiguous topics which open ways for broad debate. This year, in March, the entire world pushed the “pause” button. It is the first so intense, global experience in the history of humanity, and we do not know its range yet. We are sure that the theme of the 10th Edition of the Transatlantyk Festival – „Transformation – Awakening or Just an Upheaval” – will fire the viewers’ imagination and will enable us all to seek answers to such questions as how we want to live, work, travel and create next.”

Joanna Łapińska, the Programme Director, adds: „When we were preparing the programme for the first Silesian Edition of the Transatlantyk Festival, we could observe how people and art all around the world face the question: will the virus mark the fall of mankind or will it create an opportunity for a new beginning. Now, we are standing in front of an unprecedented chance to decide what is the world that we want to live in and what other worlds are possible. The latter, as always, is prompted by the cinema.