Timeless Film Festival Warsaw Unveils the Program for Its 3rd Edition (17–27 April 2026)

The program features more than 170 films – both features and shorts – from over 25 countries. These will be presented across director and actor retrospectives, thematic strands, special screenings, documentary sections, and screenings with live music.

Music + Film

On 24 April 2026 (Friday) at 8:30 pm, the auditorium of the Mazovian Institute of Culture will host a concert by Gruppo di Improvvisazione Giallo. Inspired by the music of Ennio Morricone, the project was initiated by Hanno Leichtmann, one of the key figures of Berlin’s electronic and experimental music scene. The event accompanies the Giallo!!! section and serves as its musical counterpart.

On 26 April 2026 (Sunday) at 8:00 pm, Luna Cinema will present the contemporary Finnish silent film Silent Trilogy, with live music and sound effects performed by Ykspihlajan Kino-orkesteri and foley artists. The film’s director, Juho Kuosmanen, is one of the leading figures of Finnish cinema, known among other works for The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, which was screened and awarded at Cannes.

On 27 April 2026 (Monday) at 7:00 pm, the festival will close at the Grand Theatre – Polish National Opera with a screening of The Saragossa Manuscript, directed by Wojciech Jerzy Has, accompanied by music composed by Krzysztof Penderecki and performed live by Małe Instrumenty, the Grand Theatre – Polish National Opera Orchestra (chamber ensemble), conducted by Katarzyna Tomala-Jedynak, with guitarists Michał Honisz and Szymon Witczyński.

Music also plays a major role in the festival’s film program. To mark the centenary of Miles Davis, the festival revisits the artist from several perspectives: historical – in Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (dir. Stanley Nelson); as a composer – in Elevator to the Gallows (dir. Louis Malle); in performance, his natural element – in Miles Davis: Live in Germany (dir. János Darvas); and as an actor – in his only speaking role in a feature film, Dingo (dir. Rolf de Heer).

The Timeless Sounds section includes Monterey Pop (dir. D.A. Pennebaker) and Woodstock: The Director’s Cut (dir. Michael Wadleigh), films devoted to the first large-scale rock festivals. Also featured are The Last Waltz (dir. Martin Scorsese), regarded by many as one of the greatest concert films ever made, and the legendary performance film The Cure: Anniversary 1978–2018 Live in Hyde Park (dir. Tim Pope).

Director and Actor Retrospectives

The retrospectives in the 3rd edition of Timeless Film Festival Warsaw form a multi-layered story about filmmakers and performers who expanded the boundaries of cinema in very different ways. A complete retrospective of Peter Weir, a filmmaker poised between realism and metaphysics, traces one of his defining motifs: the encounter between the ordinary and the inexplicable, from Picnic at Hanging Rock to Fearless.

The retrospective will be accompanied by the premiere of the book Peter Weir. Mystic and Traveller, devoted to the Australian director’s work. The publication includes an essay by Marek Haltof on Weir’s artistic trajectory as a whole, along with interviews with the director conducted by Jakub Duszyński, Michael Dempsey and Bryan McFarlane, among others. Also presented as part of the retrospective will be the premiere of “Peter Weir’s Dream Within a Dream”, a visual installation created especially for Timeless Film Festival Warsaw by Jakub Duszyński from unused footage from Picnic at Hanging Rock. In keeping with Peter Weir’s wishes, the installation will be shown exclusively on the big screen during the festival, making this the only opportunity to see it.

The section Václav Vorlíček: A Director of Wonders brings back a cinema of imagination in which fairy tale, science fiction and comedy merge in exuberant, often grotesque forms. During the grey years of “normalisation” in Czechoslovakia, Vorlíček created a colourful world of characters and adventures that delighted audiences then – and still do today. The program includes, among other titles, the cult 13-episode series Arabela, beloved in Poland as well.

The Svěráks: An Oscar-Winning Family offers a portrait of the extraordinary father-and-son duo Zdeněk and Jan Svěrák, whose films were repeatedly honoured and warmly embraced by audiences. It began with the Oscar nomination for My Sweet Little Village (dir. Jiří Menzel), for which Zdeněk wrote the screenplay and in which he also appeared. Soon afterwards, Jan won a Student Academy Award for his graduation film, and father and son later joined forces, resulting in an Oscar nomination for The Elementary School (dir. Jan Svěrák) and the Academy Award for Kolya (dir. Jan Svěrák) for Best Foreign Language Film.

The retrospective Buñuel in Mexico: Part 1 revisits a crucial period in the work of Luis Buñuel, who spent 36 years of his life in Mexico and made 20 of his 32 films there. This retrospective has only just begun and will continue in future editions.

The section Tribute to Brigitte Bardot explores the phenomenon of one of cinema’s greatest icons, whose roles from the 1950s and 1960s forever changed the screen image of women. Among her key films are La Vérité by Henri-Georges Clouzot (“Brigitte Bardot as you have never seen her before!”), Contempt by Jean-Luc Godard – often cited as her most mature performance – and Viva Maria! by Louis Malle, in her famous pairing with Jeanne Moreau.

Polish cinema takes centre stage in two retrospectives: 8 × Kawalerowicz, devoted to a filmmaker constantly searching for new forms, from psychological dramas to monumental historical spectacles; and the Barbara Sass: A Triptych, centred on three films starring Dorota Stalińska (Without Love, Scream, Debutante), which together form a powerful portrait of women who are both strong and inwardly torn.

Completing the picture is the retrospective Vytautas Žalakevičius: Time Suspended – dedicated to a filmmaker who still inspires as much admiration as controversy. The section includes Nobody Wanted to Die, one of Žalakevičius’s most important and affecting works: a stark, hypnotic story of post-war Lithuania under Soviet occupation. One of the most widely seen Lithuanian films, it was included by UNESCO in 1995, on the centenary of cinema, among the one hundred most important works of world cinema.

Thematic Sections

Film Lovers’ Feast section is the heart of the festival – a space where the canon meets discovery, and where subjective choices form a fascinating journey through film history. As Roman Gutek writes: “Working on such a selection is a bit like preparing a lavish dinner party. The host lays out an abundant table and invites the guests, who then choose their favourite dishes”. The section includes 32 titles, ranging from Manoel de Oliveira’s Portuguese Aniki-Bóbó (1942) to the cult director’s cut of Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko from the early twenty-first century.

Among the gems worth seeking out is Eight Deadly Shots (dir. Mikko Niskanen), a Finnish miniseries restored by Martin Scorsese’s foundation, which thrilled audiences in Bologna and will now be shown in Warsaw. There will also be works by major masters, including Andriej Tarkowski (Mirror, Nostalghia), Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets), Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark), and Yasujirō Ozu (Late Spring).

A particularly special proposition for film lovers is the section Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival Presents, prepared in collaboration with one of the world’s most important festivals of film classics. The selection is unmistakably Italian, but far from obvious: films from different decades engage in a surprisingly close dialogue. From Antonio Pietrangeli’s I Knew Her Well to Marco Ferreri’s The Ape Woman, from Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Spider’s Stratagem and The Dreamers to Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August and Nanni Moretti’s Dear Diary.

A completely different tone is struck by Giallo!!! – an intense journey through Italian genre cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, blending thriller, horror and noir with heightened aesthetics, eroticism, sadism, irrationality and conspiratorial tension. The program includes Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace, Dario Argento’s Deep Red and Suspiria, and Lucio Fulci’s The Psychic. Here, style, sound and violence combine into a hypnotic and unsettling whole.

The history of cinema as a tool of ideology and social change resonates in Black and White States: Race in American Cinema 1915–1991. From D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation to films by Spike Lee and John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood, the strand shows how the representation of African Americans changed over time, and how cinema helped shape – or challenge – social narratives.

Younger viewers – and those wishing to return to the world of imagination – are invited to Young Horizons: Once Upon a Time… This selection includes both genuine pop-culture classics – Disney’s first film princess and Rob Reiner’s cult The Princess Bride – and hidden treasures, such as an unexpected Finnish adaptation of The Snow Queen and the pioneering cut-out animations of Lotte Reiniger.

The strong presence of Polish cinema is reinforced by two sections prepared in collaboration with the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute. FINA Presents: Faces of Interwar Poland revisits such titles as Halka (dir. Konstanty Meglicki), Is Lucyna a Girl? (dir. Juliusz Gardan), and The Ghosts (dirs. Eugeniusz Cękalski, Karol Szołowski), revealing the many faces of Polish cinema of the period. FINA Presents: Genre Fantasies, in turn, brings together five titles from the Polish Film Heritage List, showing that Polish genre cinema rarely fitted within dominant trends, instead developing its own narrative and stylistic strategies.

Second Run Presents is a personal selection by Mehelli Modi, the man who has restored hundreds of forgotten masterpieces to circulation. Among the five chosen titles are Jan Němec’s Diamonds of the Night, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s A Moment of Innocence and Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn – talismanic films that stay with the viewer for life.

100 Years Ago: 1926 is a new section in the festival program, intended to become a permanent feature of future editions. Its aim is to revisit the most important works from a century ago, while also rediscovering lesser-known films that have recently been restored or newly found. This year’s selection includes four titles: Wsiewołod Pudowkin’s masterfully edited Mother, the brilliant comedy The General by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, Victor Sjöström’s The Scarlet Letter with an unforgettable performance by Lillian Gish, and Lew Kuleszow’s By the Law, an uncompromising tale of human nature.

The section Classic Latin American Cinema continues its journey through one of the most diverse and fascinating film traditions in the world. Latin American cinema – shaped by a common language but also by the collision of many cultures – has for decades drawn on local literature, music and history to create works of exceptional expressive power. This year, alongside Brazil and Mexico, Argentina also comes into focus – from Tango Bar starring Carlos Gardel to the formally restrained contemporary film The Custodian.

Animated Film Studio in Kraków revisits the output of one of Poland’s most important animation centers, where nearly 300 films were made and recognized around the world.

The program is completed by Special Screenings. The festival will open with the documentary Kino Muranów by Olga Prud’homme Farges, while an evening with Krzysztof Rogulski will feature The Big Picnic and the rarely screened In Search of “Tabu”.

Festival screenings will take place at Muranów, Iluzjon and Luna cinemas. The full festival program, schedule and festival passes are available online:

Online ticket sales for individual screenings begin on 9 April 2026.

Organiser:
Timeless Film Foundation

Co-organisers:
Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych i Fabularnych, Mazowiecki Instytut Kultury

Co-financed by:
Miasto Stołeczne Warszawa, Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego, Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej

Main Partners:
Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualny, Gutek Film, Stowarzyszenie Nowe Horyzonty

Partners:
BMW, kino Muranów, kino Iluzjon, kino Luna, Teatr Wielki – Opera Narodowa, Narodowe Centrum Kultury, Młode Horyzonty, Ambasada Australii w Polsce, The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Czeskie Centrum Warszawa, Litewskie Centrum Filmowe, Litewski Instytut Kultury, Ambasada Republiki Litewskiej w Polsce, Cinemateca Portuguesa – Museu do Cinema, Instytut Słowacki w Warszawie, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Varsavia, Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival, Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Goethe-Institut w Warszawie, Kino Dostępne, 35mm, Mañana, Kinooceany, Bar Studio, Pardon, To Tu, Natural Rascal, Mediaboard, Wydawnictwo w Podwórku

Media Partners:
Trójka Polskie Radio, TVP Kultura, K MAG, Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, Interia, Filmweb, Vogue, Zwierciadło, MINT Magazine, PISMO, SpoilerMaster

Industry Media Partners:
Pełna Sala, Immersja, JazzPress, Totalny Brak Kultury, Accademia Kina Włoskiego, Mocne Punkty, Klatki na oczach, Anonimowy Grzybiarz