This year marked the 60th Anniversary edition of the venerable Cannes Film Festival. The world may have changed dramatically since the festival’s inception, but this annual event is by no means ready to relinquish its leading role in the global film industry. On the contrary, in recent years the crowds flocking to the French Riviera every May seem to be growing in size and stature.

Polish cinema has been present in Cannes almost from the beginning, with the high point coming in 1981, when Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Iron won the festival’s top award, the Golden Palm. In fact, the distinguished Polish director was a special guest in Cannes this time too, exactly fifty years after one of his early films, Kanal, won the Special Jury Prize at the festival. To commemorate the occasion, a newly-restored print of Kanal was shown at a gala screening held at the Palais to a near-full audience. Wajda clearly enjoyed himself yet again in Cannes, attending a number of social events with his wife, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, and busily promoting his almost-finished new film, Katyn, a historical drama about the killings of Polish Army officers by the Soviet authorities in the Katyn forest during World War II. During his stay in Cannes, Wajda met with many of his long-time admirers, including the First Lady of Ukraine, Kateryna Yushchenko. About the only blemish related to Wajda’s presence at the festival was the last-minute cancellation of the screening of Man of Iron at the open-air beach cinema, due to the organizers’ inability to secure a French-subtitled print.

Two other great Polish directors came to Cannes as well, albeit for very different reasons. Roman Polanski, a Golden Palm winner for The Pianist, was chosen to direct one of 33 short films especially prepared for this year’s Cannes celebration of cinema as an art form. His amusing vignette was generally well received, but his behavior at a press conference attended by the entire group of filmmakers who worked on the project was a whole different matter. Disappointed by the quality of questions asked by journalists, Polanski took the microphone and proclaimed that the meeting was “a waste of time and everyone should go to lunch instead” – then promptly left the room. Polanski’s dislike of the media has been well documented, but he will likely have to make amends with the press in the near future. After all, his upcoming historical epic Pompeii, rumored to be the most expensive European production ever, will be released in a couple of years amidst a full-force marketing blitz. By contrast, the stay in Cannes of another famous Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski was shorter and less eventful, although he did accompany the Polish delegation on the red carpet on their way to an evening gala presentation.

The presence of a large group of Polish filmmakers in Cannes this year was precipitated by the inclusion of Poland as one of the countries selected for a national spotlight in the Tous les Cinemas du Monde (All of the World’s Cinemas) program. One day, May 22, was entirely devoted to the screenings of Polish productions in a temporary, tent-like theater. The Polish Film Institute (PISF) chose to showcase three recent feature films, Palimpsest by Konrad Niewolski, Chaos by Xawery Zulawski, and Co slonko widzialo (What Sun Has Seen) by Michal Rosa, as well as five documentaries and shorts. Invited guests from Poland included, among others, directors Filip Marczewski, Rafal Kapelinski, Maciej Adamek, Marcin Pieczonka, and Wojciech Kasperski, producer Krzysztof Kopczynski, and cinamatographer Pawel Dyllus. Helping the largely young group fit into the unfamiliar Cannes environment were the President of Polish Filmmakers’ Association, Jacek Bromski, and the Deputy Director of PISF, Maciej Karpinski. Among the highlights of their visit was a walk on the red carpet preceding the screening of Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, during which every member of the group was introduced by name to the hundreds of photographers, cameramen, and fans surrounding the entry to the festival Palais. The presentations of Polish films were relatively well attended, but the planned panel discussion on the current state of Polish cinema had to be called off because of insufficient interest. Nothing whatsoever, however could spoil a fancy party celebrating Polish film that was organized at a popular beach restaurant. Hundreds of revelers from many countries enjoyed food and dancing under the clear Mediterranean sky well into the night.

In line with the increased visibility of the Polish film industry at this year’s festival, a consortium of professional organizations and private companies under the leadership of PISF leased an impressive space right on the central seaside promenade, Croisette, for a Polish Cinema National Stand. The place proved to be a great center for meetings involving both Polish and foreign filmmakers and producers looking for international deals. The traditional Polish hospitality was particularly evident during informal evening gatherings. Polish Television TVP had its own promotional stand and organized a festive presentation of the newly-created Kieslowski Prize, awarded to a promising screenwriter from Central Europe. The event was presided upon by TVP’s new Chairman, Andrzej Urbanski, and the Director of PISF, Agnieszka Odorowicz, while Kieslowski’s star actress, Irene Jacob, read the jury’s verdict. This year’s winner turned out to be Zuzana Liova from Slovakia, but one of the honorable mentions was given to a Polish writer-director Dariusz Blaszczyk.

With so many Polish-related events happening in Cannes, everyone would have been truly happy, if only there were more Polish films chosen by the festival organizers as part of the official selection. The main competition featured just one Polish production: a computer-animated short Arka (The Ark), which turned out to be a dazzling visual spectacle created by Grzegorz Jonkajtys. La Cinefondation, a special competition designed for students, included Goyta, an interesting etude by Joanna Jurewicz, a young Polish filmmaker from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Another festival section, The Critics’ Week, invited a short Polish feature film Lodka (The Boat). Given the scarcity of Polish titles, it was more up to foreign films with some Polish accents to carry the banner of Poland’s presence at the festival. And, in fact, there were several such movies. The Critics’ Week gave its top prize for a short film to Madame Tutli-Putli, a Canadian animated production loosely based on a story by Witkacy, directed jointly by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, a Polish émigré. The Un Certain Regard section of the festival presented a German film And Along Came Tourists that was shot in the city of Oswiecim and tells a story of a young German man who volunteers to work at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Two of the three leading actors in the film are Poles, Barbara Wysocka and Ryszard Ronczewski. Its opening musical number is the great hit performed by Czeslaw Niemen, Dziwny jest ten swiat (How Strange is This World).

As always, there were also some Polish filmmakers who came to Cannes as a result of their great work done outside of Poland. One such example this year was the two-time Academy Award winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski. Although he now collaborates almost exclusively with Steven Spielberg, Kaminski was invited to Cannes as the director of photography of a French film chosen for the main competition, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Julian Schnabel. Based on a true event, this subtle, engaging story presents the viewpoint of a stroke victim who struggles to communicate with the outside world. Kaminski’s work on the picture is nothing less than stellar. The camera ingenuously contorts and colors the perspective of the main character. To no one’s surprise, the Polish-born cimatographer was awarded the Technical Grand Prize of the festival. Later this year, Kaminski will see the premiere of his second film as a director, Hania, a contemporary family drama shot entirely in Polish.

Another internationally renowned Polish artist, composer Wojciech Kilar, created the musical score to the American-made competition feature We Own the Night, directed by James Gray. This moody gangster saga didn’t win any prizes, but the work of Kilar was clearly noticed and appreciated. There was plenty of Polish beauty on the red carpet, too. The young Polish actress Alicja Bachleda-Curus has been enjoying her most successful year yet on the international scene with the great reception at Sundance of her American independent production Trade. Since then, Bachleda-Curus has received a number of interesting offers, and traveled Cannes as a representative of the famous Swiss jeweler Chopard. Given the opportunity, she clearly dazzled the photographers on the red carpet with her charming smile. At this point of her career, Bachleda-Curus is trying to divide her time between Poland and the United States, and her future seems to be bright on both sides of the Atlantic.

And last, but certainly not least, it ought to be noted that visitors to this year’s Cannes Film Festival could see many prominently displayed billboards and posters with the image of Pope John Paul II. It was all a part of an advertising campaign promoting a documentary film by Jowita Gondek, Generation John Paul II: Crossroads. Whether it was the popular subject matter or the quality of the film itself, the result was that the movie sold to more countries than did any other recent Polish production. Clearly, the aura of the late Holy Father still carries a lot of pull – even in Cannes!