Let me be blunt. Most days working on a short film in last years feels like Blade Runner 2049. You are programmed. You chase views. You start wondering if your own ideas are even yours or just someone else’s data stuck in your head.
I am Marek, Marek Broda. I grew up in a small town in southern Poland. Nobody makes films there. One guy shoots weddings. It was me. That was my first job, by the way. Standing in the corner with a camera, filming drunk uncles dancing. I learned more about human misery at those weddings than at any film school.
I never had a real career. I had projects. Freelance gigs. A commercial here, a corporate video there, a script that went nowhere. I lived on temporary contracts. Short films were my way of pretending I was still an artist.
The European dream (the brochure is lying)
Everyone talks about European funding. Yes, the money exists. I got some of it once. But the process is a joke. You spend months writing applications. You answer questions about “impact” and “European values.” You wait. You get rejected. You apply again. When you finally get the grant, you owe them reports, logos, festival lists. You become a small cog in a very slow machine.
I am not angry. I am just tired.
I traveled to festivals across Europe. France, Italy, Denmark, Spain. Sometimes the room was full. Sometimes there were seven people and two of them were sleeping. You answer the same questions. “What camera did you use?” “How long did it take?” You smile. You exchange social media handles. Later you scroll through their profiles and realize they would never watch your film. That is fine. That is the game.
The US trip (where I learned about selling)
I flew to the United States once. A festival in Colorado invited me. A nice programmer, genuinely enthusiastic. I went there thinking, maybe this is it.
It was not it.
Nobody was rude. Nobody asked me to change my film. But the whole atmosphere was different. People talked about “packaging” and “audience targeting” and “sellability.” My little Polish story became a “premium niche content.” I felt like my memory implant had been analyzed for market potential.
I came back home. Nothing happened. Just a few new followers who never interacted again.
The warmest memory (Minsk, ten years ago, maybe)
But I will tell you something else. Something I almost forgot.
About ten years ago, I went to a festival called NoFilter Kino in Minsk. I do not remember exactly when. I do not even remember if I took a train or a bus. But I remember this.
Local families hosted visiting filmmakers. Strangers opened their homes. I stayed with a retired teacher and his wife. They had a small apartment, not much space, but they gave me their son’s room because their son was studying in another country. Every morning she made me breakfast. Every evening he asked me about my film, not because he wanted to be polite, but because he was genuinely curious.
No funding bodies. No market potential. No loglines. Just people.
After my screening, a young man came up to me. He said, “I did not understand all the words. But I understood the silence.” That stayed with me.
That was the opposite of everything I have felt at most festivals. There was no algorithm there. No programming. Just a room full of people who wanted to see something real.
I have been to forty festivals since then. Big ones, small ones, rich ones, poor ones. And I still think about that apartment in Minsk, the tea she made, the way he nodded when I talked about my grandfather.
Why do I still go?
Because once in a while, something real happens. Not often. But just often enough.
The rest is noise. The “Joi” effect. The fake warmth. The festival that calls you a “visionary” in an email that is clearly a template. The curator who praises your work and then programs it at 9 AM on a Sunday. You learn to smile and move on.
I am not young anymore. I am a tired freelancer. I have done weddings, commercials, training videos. I have lived on temporary projects for fifteen years. Short films are the only place where I still feel like myself.
So I still submit. I still travel. I still stand in the back of the theater, watching strangers watch my work. And then I go home, back to my freelance chaos, and I start the next thing.
Do not romanticize festivals. They are not families. They are not saviors. They are just mirrors. Sometimes they show you something beautiful. Sometimes they show you an exhausted man who needs a shower and a real job.
But once in a while, in the middle of all the nonsense, you get that one real conversation. Or a cup of tea in a stranger’s apartment. And that is enough to keep going.
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