The Whale, a documentary produced by PRZEKRÓJ Foundation about the day when a whale appeared on a sandy beach in Warsaw, has won the Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival (SDFF) 2020 Jury Award for best Mini Doc film, Przekrój Magazine has learned from the organizers.

“Mysterious and cinematic, The Whale is a very conceptually rich and overall powerful film,” one of the jurors at the Californian festival commented.

The documentary, written and directed by Iza Pająk, recalls the events of Friday, 9th December 2017. It was supposed to be a regular day for those living in the Polish capital, Warsaw. However, at dawn a whale appeared.

This creature – which was huge, motionless and smelled of the ocean – was lying next to a bridge on a sandy Vistula shore in the centre of the city. Scientists were bustling about around it. People asked: Is it real? How on Earth did it get here? Is it possible to save it? As time passed by, it turned out that the whale was actually a sculpture by the Belgian collective Captain Boomer, which had been brought to Warsaw by our quarterly magazine. It was a sculpture that raised questions.

Watch the documentary “The Whale” and read more about the events of that day here.