Camerimage Lineup Includes ‘F1,’ ‘Sinners,’ ‘Hamnet’ and ‘House of Dynamite’

The sumptuous lensing of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, and Joseph Kosinski’s F1: The Movie will be in the spotlight of the 33rd EnergaCamerimage Film Festival, which unveiled its main competition lineup on Wednesday.

Sinners, shot by Autumn Durald Arkapaw, Hamnet, photographed by Łukasz Żal, and F1, lensed by Claudio Miranda, are among the bigger titles competing for the Golden Frog this year at the world’s leading festival devoted to the art of cinematography.

Also in the running are James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, shot by Phedon Papamichael; Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear attack thriller A House of Dynamite, filmed by Barry Ackroyd; James Vanderbilt’s period drama Nuremberg, shot by Dariusz Wolski, and Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, lensed by Masanobu Takayanagi.

Among the European competition titles are Chopin, a Sonata in Paris by Michał Kwieciński, shot by Michał Sobociński; Mother by Teona Strugar Mitevska, with cinematography by Virginie Saint Martin; Sound of Falling by Mascha Schilinski, photographed by Fabian Gamper; 12 Paintings of Enslavement by Lech Majewski, co-shot with Paweł Tybora; Franz by Agnieszka Holland, lensed by Tomasz Naumiuk; and Late Shift by Petra Biondina Volpe, shot by Judith Kaufmann.

Of the 13 competition titles, only three feature female cinematographers — Autumn Durald Arkapaw for Sinners, Virginie Saint Martin for Mother and Judith Kaufmann for Late Shift — a gender imbalance certain to reignite debate over Camerimage’s support of women DOPs.

Last year’s Camerimage was engulfed in controversy after festival founder and hCEO Marek Żydowicz published an Op-Ed that appeared to argue that admitting the work of more female cinematographers would mean compromising on artistic quality. The piece was in response to a petition from Women in Cinematography, an international union representing female directors of photography, which called on the festival to better support the work of women cinematographers.

Several professional organisations, including the British Society of Cinematographers (BSC) and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), criticised the op-ed and called for changes at the festival.
Director Steve McQueen, who was scheduled to open the 2024 festival with Blitz, and receive the director award, declined to attend, citing Żydowicz’s Op-Ed. French director Coralie Fargeat, in protest, pulled her film The Substance from the festival.

The 33rd EnergaCamerimage Film Festival will be held in Toruń, Poland and run Nov. 15-23.