The hour-and-an-half film offers a backstage look at the last International Chopin Piano Competition, which was held in Warsaw in 2021.
The film’s protagonists are five participants in the event: Leonora Armellini and Michelle Candotti from Italy; the teenage Russian-Armenian pianist Eva Gevorgyan; Marcin Wieczorek of Poland; and Hao Rao of China.
They were chosen by the director a few months before the competition. In his decision, Piątek was guided solely by pure documentary interest and intuition.
The effort involved the risk that the five pianists could be eliminated in the first round. They all agreed, however, that no matter how far they would advance in the competition, the film would be made.
As it turned out, Armellini won Fifth Prize, Gevorgyan and Rao reached the finals, Candotti dropped out after the third stage, and Wieczorek bowed out in the second round.
According to critics, Pianoforte shows superbly how the pianists deal with rising stress before appearing before the audience, how they cope with PR agencies that surround them, and how they spend their free time.
The Los Angeles Times described Pianoforte as “tense and touching,” while the Collider website called it “a gripping look at the world of piano competitions.”
Pianoforte premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States last year. In May, it won the top award at the Millennium Docs Against Gravity Festival in Warsaw.
Born in 1985, Piątek graduated from the Polish National Film School in Łódź. Before studying directing, he worked as a journalist and culture manager. In 2021, his feature fiction debut, Prime Time, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
Established in 1927, the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw is among the world’s most prestigious events of its kind. Its next, 19th, edition is scheduled for 2025.
A statue of the great Romantic composer Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) in Warsaw's Łazienki Park. Pixabay License; Image by Jacek Dopieralski from Pixabay
(mk/gs)