Ashes By Name Is Man

Award-winning short where Catholicism and the natural world echo each other through montage, revealing history inscribed in the earth and all that arises from it.

Polish filmmaker Ewelina Rosińska explores the textures and landscapes of her homeland, a place of contrasts and parallels, where Catholicism and the natural world resonate in rhythmic gesture and visual musicality. A delicate history weaves through the details of this poetic and poignant impression. Rosińska: “I read in the writings of a painter that, for him, the Polish landscape seems to constantly draw our gaze to the ground, making us look not over the horizon but under our feet, at the bones buried beneath each step. The film shifts between a portrait of my 80-year-old grandparents and my view on the elements and imagery of the national-Catholic narrative in the Polish landscape. The title ‘Ashes by Name is Man‘ is borrowed from a church notice board in Nowa Grobla, in Roztocze. At the centre of my explorations is the range of hills of Roztocze, while Kraków and Lviv form the boundaries of the area in which I was shooting”.

Programme section: Between Film and Art
Original title: Popiół imieniem jest człowieka | Year: 2023 | Duration: 20′
Country: Poland, Germany | Language: Not spoken
Director: Ewelina Rosińska | Production: Ewelina Rosińska, Roxana Richters | Cast: Janina Mokrzycka, Władysław Mokrzycki | Cinematography: Ewelina Rosińska | Editing: Ewelina Rosińska | Sound: Ewelina Rosińska

FESTIVALS & AWARDS (SELECTION) 

International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2023 – World Premiere | First Look 2023, Museum of the Moving Image, New York, 2023 | Istanbul Film Festival, 2023 | FICUNAM International Cinema Festival, Mexico City, 2023 | Marienbad Film Festival, 2023 | Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, 2023 – Best EXiS Award | New Horizons Film Festival, 2023 | Fracto, Experimental Film Encounter, Berlin, 2023 | Courtisane Festival, Ghent 2023 | German Short Film Awards, 2023 | Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, 2023 – Shortlisted for the Moving Image Art Prize

DIRECTOR’S BIO 

Ewelina Rosińska (1987, Poland) is an experimental filmmaker. She graduated from Jagiellonian University (Art History) and the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin (Filmmaking). In her practice, she mainly works with the Bolex camera and collects images and sounds on a daily basis. Her graduation film “Ashes by Name Is Man” won the Best EXiS Award at the EXiS Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul and was nominated for the German Short Film Award in 2023. In 2024, she received a Berlin Senate grant for moving image artists. Her recent film “Unstable Rocks” premiered at Doclisboa International Film Festival 2024, followed by an international premiere at the CPH:DOX 2025, and was nominated for the Doc Alliance Award. She lives and works in Germany and Portugal.