Bogdan Zdrojewski

Dear Organisers, Participants and Visitors of the 26th International Young Audience Film Festival Ale Kino!

Last year we celebrated the Festival’s 25th anniversary. This year’s edition opens a new page in the history of the Festival, which has rendered great service to promoting film art. It attracts film artists who direct their work to young audiences. The Festival still enjoys great popularity, which means that valuable film productions for young audiences are not losing enthusiasts and supporters. Through all these years the role and function of the Festival has evolved, but the main aim to present children’s and young people’s films to a wide audience is still being pursued. The Festival audience can see movies selected for their artistic and educational values, movies which shape tastes and sensitivity of young viewers, movies which avoid excessive didacticism.

As always, Festival screenings are accompanied by seminars, meetings and lectures, whose participants are film directors, actors, film artists from all over the world as well as teachers and educators. This makes the Festival a place where, after shows, professionals discuss how to select the most worthy pictures for young cineastes. All these activities serve to facilitate the exchange of ideas and joint reflection to help others understand film works. I am convinced that, thanks to such well-tested initiatives, young Festival visitors will become valuable and well-informed cinema audiences in the future.

I would like to thank all the film artists who present their films at Festival screenings, and also to congratulate prize winners on the awards and honorary mentions, especially those awarded by the young cinemagoers.

Moreover, it is a chance for me to thank the whole team who works to improve the formula and enrich the programme of the Festival. Therefore, I wish to thank the Organisers for their consistent efforts to implement the idea of presenting and promoting the most valuable film works aimed at young viewers.

Bogdan Zdrojewski
Minister of Culture and National Heritage