The hour-and-an-half film offers a backstage look at the 2021 International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, one of the world’s most prestigious events of its kind.
The film’s protagonists are five participants in the competition: Leonora Armellini and Michelle Candotti from Italy; the teenage Russian-Armenian pianist Eva Gevorgyan; Marcin Wieczorek of Poland; and Hao Rao of China.
In choosing them, the director, Jakub Piątek, was guided solely by pure documentary interest and intuition. The decision, taken a few months before the competition, 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 the Fifth Prize, Gevorgyan and Rao reached the finals, Candotti dropped out after the third stage, and Wieczorek bowed out in the second round.
Pianoforte shows how they deal with rising stress before appearing on the concert platform, how they cope with the PR agencies that surround them, and how they spend their free time.
The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States in 2023. Earlier this year, it was nominated for the Golden Reel Awards in the category of Outstanding Achievement in Music Editing.
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.
The International Emmy Awards recognize outstanding achievements in TV programming produced and initially aired outside the United States. They are awarded across 14 categories. The winners will be announced on November 25 in New York City.
(mk/aj)