Krystyna Janda, Pawel Szajda in Swet Rush
The European Film Academy, EFA Productions, and the International Federation of Film Critics FIPRESCI have announced that the 2009 Prix FIPRESCI goes to 83-year-old Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda (right) for Tatarak / Sweet Rush.
Based on Sándor Márai's short story, Sweet Rush — which has some points in common with The Door in the Floor — chronicles the love affair between a neglected doctor's wife (veteran Krystyna Janda) whose two sons died in World War II and a man half her age (US-born actor Pawel Szajda).
Shooting was interrupted following the death of Janda's husband, Wajda's frequent cinematographer Edward Klosinski. When production resumed, Wajda rearranged the narrative to focus on the filmmaking process itself, with Janda providing a first-person monologue at the beginning and at the end of the tale.
Sweet Rush shared with Gigante the Alfred Bauer Award at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival. Curiously, Wajda's unusual drama is not Poland's submission for the 2010 Academy Award for best foreign language film — the Polish committee chose instead Borys Lankosz's Reverse.
FIPRESCI’s General Secretary Klaus Eder explained: “For us critics it is without doubt a big pleasure to honor Wajda, who wrote European film history already with his first films (Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds) and who has influenced generations of filmmakers. We are therefore pleased and honored to show him all our respect as critics. Our award also honors his latest film Tatarak. It's not at all what you would call a later work — it is, on the contrary, the film of a young spirit, with which Wajda in a risky and courageous way undertakes to open new and very personal perspectives for the European authors' cinema of today.”
According to the European Film Academy's press release, Andrzej Wajda will be present at the 2009 European Film Awards ceremony on December 12 in Bochum, Germany, to accept his award.