The Queen and the Smokehouse (Polish title Bałtyk), written and directed by Iga Lis, centres on Miecia, affectionately known as the local ‘queen’, who has run her smokehouse in a Baltic seaside resort for more than four decades.
According to the producer’s note: "More than a workplace, the smokehouse is a social hub and a point of reference for the community around it."
"When declining health forces Miecia to loosen her grip on the business, a fragile transition begins, exposing the uncertain future of both the smokehouse and the people whose lives orbit around it."
Lis, 25, is a history graduate of the London School of Economics.
She describes her feature-length debut as "a tale about the last bastions of authenticity in places consumed by tourism" and as a reflection "on the passage of time" as well as "a story of female strength in the pursuit of success and dedication to providing for loved ones".
Acclaimed at last year’s Kraków Film Festival, The Queen and the Smokehouse had its international premiere in January at the FIPADOC Documentary Film Festival in Biarritz, France.
The other Polish entry at the True/False Film Festival is Closure, directed by Michał Marczak.
It tells the story of a father’s search for his teenage son, who went missing in the Vistula River.
According to the programme note, "The Vistula River is hauntingly transformed into a purgatory for a grieving father, Daniel, as he painstakingly scours each of its winding turns, pulled between the uncertainty of life and death in his search for any trace of his missing son, Krzysztof."
Born in 1982, Marczak is a graduate of the Fine Arts Academy in Poznań, western Poland. He also studied at the California Institute of the Arts.
Closure was shown last month at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States.
In 2016, Marczak won the Best Director prize in the World Cinema Documentary category at Sundance for All These Sleepless Nights.
The True/False Film Festival is set to take place from 5 to 8 March in Columbia, Missouri.
(mk/ał)