Film Fund: Our Films Receive Further Awards and Nominations
Death Candidates, directed by Bydgoszcz-born filmmaker Maciej Cuske, has been named the Best Film in the Documentary Competition at the 13th TAURON Young Horizons International Film Festival. The production also received the Katarzyna Stoparczyk Young Horizons Grand Prize for Best Polish Production. The award was accepted by director Maciej Cuske and producer Ewa Hoffmann.
The Documentary Competition jury, comprising Bartosz Dajnowski, Agnieszka Gołębiewska and Ula Malko, praised the film as “a sensitive film about growing up, friendship, fatherhood and male emotions, in which a love of cinema and sharing that passion becomes the bond holding together a relationship that has endured for years.”
Death Candidates is an extraordinary story about friendship, growing up and a shared passion for cinema. It all began more than a decade ago, when the director took his son and two of his friends on holiday. Wanting to draw the boys away from their computers, he suggested that they make a horror film. The idea evolved into a long-term adventure and a unique filmmaking experiment. For 17 years, they have gone on holiday together every year, travelling to mysterious corners of Poland to make another horror film in the Death Candidates series.
The camera has accompanied them over the years, documenting not only their successive filmmaking projects, but above all the changes taking place in the lives of its protagonists. Today, the boys from those early films are almost thirty. Each is following his own path. Maciej Cuske’s film thus becomes much more than a record of an extraordinary adventure. It is a story about growing up, searching for one’s place in the world, fears, dreams, fatherhood, and the strength of a friendship that, despite the passage of time, can endure.
The success at Young Horizons is another important accolade for Death Candidates. The film previously received, among other awards, the Best Polish Film Award in the Polish Competition, the Audience Award – Warsaw Documentary Award, and a distinction from Newsweek Psychologia magazine at the 23rd Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival.
The TAURON Young Horizons International Film Festival took place in 48 cities across Poland, becoming one of the most important events showcasing films aimed at young audiences and productions addressing important issues from the perspective of young viewers.
The productions supported by the Kujawy and Pomorze Film Fund – Death Candidates and Three Songs, directed by Krzysztof Nowicki – have been selected for the Main Competition in the Documentary category of the Opolskie Lamy Film Festival. The event began on October 4 and will continue through Saturday.
Paweł Jankowski
Department of Promotion
October 5, 2026