Warsaw’s Teatr Dramatyczny was the setting on Thursday evening as the 23rd Millennium Docs Against Gravity festival handed out its awards — and if the night had a theme, it was this: the most powerful stories are the ones people lived before they ever picked up a camera.
The Grand Prix — the Bank Millennium Award worth €10,000 — went to Daughters of the Mountain, directed by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić. The jury described it as a portrait of chosen solitude shared between an aunt and her niece, set against a landscape of rural tradition and natural beauty. It’s the kind of film that doesn’t shout to be heard.
But if one person dominated the evening, it was Soraya Akhlaghi — the 16-year-old co-director, subject, and narrator of The Fox and the Pink Moon, which picked up the Special Mention in the Main Competition, the FIPRESCI Award, and the Amnesty International Poland prize.
Over five years, Soraya documented her own life on a mobile phone — her art, her attempts to escape an abusive marriage in Iran, and her desperate effort to reach her mother in Austria. She walked onto the stage three times to collect awards, visibly moved each time. The room felt it.
The Best Polish Film prize (€4,000) went to Death Candidates, directed by Maciej Cuske — a seven-year project that the jury called “a daring rollercoaster,” blending coming-of-age warmth with genuine horror.
Maciej Cuske spent seven years making Death Candidates. “We have a small camera, but a vision as big as a burrito,” he said on stage — quoting his own film.
Traces, co-directed by Alisa Kovalenko and Marysia Nikitiuk — a Polish co-production documenting women affected by Russian aggression in Ukraine — received a Special Mention in the Polish Competition.
Directors Alisa Kovalenko and Marysia Nikitiuk accepted their Special Mention for Traces with a message that cut through the room: “In an ocean of pain and trauma, there are also smiles. Only our solidarity can stop aggression.”
The Green Warsaw Award, funded by the City of Warsaw and worth 15,000 PLN, went to The Songs of the Forest by Vincent Munier. The director recalled spending childhood days with his parents in Białowieża Forest — those memories, it seems, never left him.
Vincent Munier, director of The Songs of the Forest and winner of the Green Warsaw Award — a prize that felt fitting for a filmmaker whose childhood was shaped by Poland’s own ancient woodland.
The evening’s host, Agnieszka Szydłowska, mentioned that Warsaw had just registered its first same-sex marriage transcription — the audience responded with sustained applause. Iceland’s ambassador Friðrik Jónsson added his congratulations from the stage. Festival organisers were clear: documentary cinema has every right to engage with the politics of the present moment, whether or not everyone is comfortable with that.
The cinema screenings wrapped on Sunday 17 May, but the festival isn’t over yet — the online edition runs from 19 May to 1 June at mdag.pl, so there’s still time to catch the winners from home. Audience voting results for the Documentary Award of Warsaw and the Onet Big Screen Doc prize will also be announced now that the cinema run has closed.
