27 Mar 2020 A film by Monika Kotecka greenlighted for the second session in Film Development – Film Production Operational Programme funding at Polish Film Institute
Despite the difficult circumstances that film industry is facing nowadays globally, Centrala Film is not slowing down and continues to work on active projects. Currently we are developing a documentary feature film ‘The Plague’ (Pol. „Zaraza”) directed by Monika Kotecka with Beata Bartecka as a co-writer. The project has been qualified for the second session in Film Development – Film Production Operational Programme funding at Polish Film Institute (PISF).
The documentary is being developed for over a year now, with Centrala Film as the production company from the very beginning. Nevertheless we had never expected that our film could become so up-to-date because of an actual plague, as we are witnessing the global pandemic caused by COVID-19. It will certainly stimulate us towards fresh ideas and bring ‘The Plague’ to the next level.
Filmmakers’ comment:
We have been working on ‘The Plague’ for over a year now. Its starting point was the last smallpox epidemic in Wrocław, Poland. Events from 1963 became the pretext for us to think and speak metaphorically about modern-day times. One of the last questions which we have been asking our interviewees and experts was: „What if the plague breaks out today?”. We treated it like an abstract, impossible hypothesis and a metaphore for our deliberations. Reality took us by surprise. Global pandemic became an irrefutable fact, and metaphors got real.
