Music and films at the Artus Festival 2026
The festival at Artus Court is not only about music, but also film screenings
Music takes center stage at Artus Festival 2026, with rock concerts, folk, alternative music and singer-songwriter performances. The program also includes a number of interesting film screenings. The first one takes place on Thursday, 7 May.
At 5:00 PM, Artus Cinema will screen “Szkoda, że nareszcie”, a documentary by Sebastian Juszczyk devoted to Jacek Szymkiewicz, the leader of the band Pogodno. The film documents the artistic career of the popular “Budyń” – from his beginnings in Szczecin, through the intense years with Pogodno, to his later projects. The musician died suddenly in 2022 at the age of 47.
“The film is based on archival concert recordings, private footage, and conversations with friends, musicians and collaborators. Budyń emerges here as an ambiguous figure: a charismatic frontman, a poet of everyday life, an ironist, and at the same time a deeply sensitive artist aware of language as creative material,” the organizers explain.
Tickets cost PLN 10 and can be purchased online.
Two weeks later, on Thursday, 21 May, the cinema at Artus Court will present the British documentary One to One: John and Yoko directed by Kevin Macdonald, telling the story of the iconic artistic couple John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
“One to One” was the title of the charity concert held at Madison Square Garden in August 1972. The two performances by Lennon, Ono and accompanying musicians were attended by more than 40,000 people in total. More than 1.5 million dollars was raised to support children with intellectual disabilities. The New York concert – Lennon’s only full-length stage performance after leaving The Beatles – serves as the central theme of the film and an opportunity to portray the world and the United States in the early 1970s.
The documentary also uses telephone conversations recorded by the FBI. Lennon, well known for criticizing the American authorities, was under government surveillance.
“The documentary raises questions about where privacy ends and public performance begins, and whether in the case of Lennon and Ono these two spheres can even be separated,” reads the film description.
Director Kevin Macdonald won an Academy Award for the documentary One Day in September about the hostage massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.
After the screening at Artus Cinema, there will be a meeting with Anna Magalska, actress and creator of the monodrama 9 x John L., which qualified for the United Solo Theatre Festival in New York. The production will be presented in October 2026 at Theatre Row Off-Broadway. In 2023, Magalska also published the book „Yoko Ono. Wyobraź sobie… wolność międzyludzką.”
Department of Promotion
Dariusz Czołgowski
7 May 2026