Film Fund: “Candidates for Death” Wins at the 23rd MDAG Festival
A documentary by Bydgoszcz-based director Maciej Cuske has been named the Best Polish Film at the 23rd edition of Millennium Docs Against Gravity. The production was supported by our Kujawsko-Pomorskie Film Fund.
Millennium Docs Against Gravity is the largest documentary film festival in Poland. The winners of this year’s edition have just been announced. The Grand Prix went to the international production “Mountain’s Daughters” directed by Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić.
Ten films were selected for the Polish competition section. The jury — Joanna Łapińska, Raul Niño Zambrano, and Ola Staszel — chose Candidates for Death by Maciej Cuske as the winner. The director from Bydgoszcz received a €4,000 prize.
“For its exhilarating cinematic roller coaster ride; a tender yet devilishly funny portrait of growing up, friendship, and closeness, where carefree moments blend with fears that can be just as terrifying as horror-movie zombies,” the jury wrote in their statement.
Candidates for Death had its world premiere in March at the international festival in Thessaloniki, one of Europe’s leading showcases of documentary cinema. The director worked on the film for nearly two decades.
The starting point was a story from years ago: a summer vacation during which Cuske took his son Staś and two of his friends on a trip. Wanting to pull them away from computer screens, he suggested making an amateur horror film. Over time, the summer pastime evolved into a 17-year creative ritual, and the documentary became a record of the protagonists’ coming of age, relationships, and personal transformations. Today, the boys are nearly 30 years old, and Stanisław has become a sought-after cinematographer.
The film has already received a review from the industry portal Cineuropa:
“The more the boys realize that their shared summer escapades across various parts of Poland are a way of preserving their friendship, a space for reflection, and a step toward maturity, the more Maciej — father and mentor — understands that they are also his direct connection to youth, as well as a kind of armor helping him face the gradual approach of old age. He also realizes that shooting the final episode, which has imperceptibly become a metaphor for the passing of life, is in nobody’s interest.”
Candidates for Death was produced by the Bydgoska Kronika Filmowa Foundation. A partner of the production is our Kujawsko-Pomorskie Film Fund — the documentary received funding through the project “Kujawy + Pomorze: Promotion of the Region’s Economic Potential.” The film is scheduled for its theatrical premiere in August.
Maciej Cuske graduated from the documentary course at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing in Warsaw. Together with fellow Wajda School alumni Marcin Sauter, Piotr Stasik, and Thierry Paladino, he co-founded the “Paladino” collective, which received the Grzegorz Ciechowski Artistic Award in 2006.
His documentary The Whale from Lorino, shot in Chukotka, won the Polish Film Awards Eagle Award for Best Documentary in 2021, as well as the Golden Frog at the 2020 Camerimage festival in the same category. Together with Marcin Sauter, he runs the Bydgoska Kronika Filmowa, a unique project not only within the region but across Poland, combining the characteristics of a film school and a film club.
Millennium Docs Against Gravity
The 23rd edition of the festival takes place from May 8 to 17 in seven cities: Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdynia, Poznań, Katowice, Łódź, and Bydgoszcz, before moving online from May 19 to June 1. The program includes nearly 180 documentaries from around the world, along with meetings with filmmakers, workshops, debates, and music events.
Dariusz Czołgowski
Department of Promotion
15 May 2026