Kill It and Leave This Town, Mariusz Wilczyński (Bombonierka/Extreme Emotions/Iam – Adam Mickiewicz Institute/EC1 Lodz – City of Culture/Letko/Di Factory/Gigant Films/Polish Film Institute) Poland, 2020, 88′

Fleeing from despair after losing those dearest to him, the hero hides in a safe land of memories, where time stands still and all those dear to him are alive. Over the years, a city grows in his imagination. One day, literary heroes and cartoon childhood idols, who in the consciousness of the successive generations are forever young and wearing short pants, come to live there, uninvited. When our hero discovers they have all grown old and that eternal youth does not exist, he decides to return to real life. And the amazing characters living in his imagination lead him back to the real world.

A self-taught artist who has been making animated auteur cinema for over twenty years. Retrospectives of his films have been held, among others, at MoMA in New York, National Museum of Brasília, Tokyo International Forum, The National Museum in Warsaw, and The National Gallery in London. He also stages improvised live animation performances in collaboration with symphony orchestras from Hong Kong, Paris, Tokyo, Geneva, Lviv and Warsaw. In 2007, the New York Times named him “one of the most important contemporary creators of artistic animation.” For the past 11 years, he worked on the feature animation Kill It and Leave This Town. He is a professor of animation at the Film School in Łódź.

Petra Meterc is a film critic and translator from Slovenia. For years she has been writing on film and literature for Radio Študent. She publishes in Ekran and KINO!  magazine, as well as other media outlets. She has worked as a film education mentor and a mentor of film criticism workshops. She is a Berlinale Talent Press and IFFR Trainee Project for Young Film Critics alumna. She helps preparing the Festival of migrant film and since 2020, she is also a part of the Animateka festival team.

The event is a part of CEE Animation Experience @AnimatekaPRO.