The 39th Warsaw International Film Festival held October 6 to 15, 2023 awarded the Grand Prix to Coral, a short film written and directed by Sonia Oleniak ’21 and produced by Eda Çarikçi ’18 and Constanza Majluf ’21. With this win, Coral now qualifies for the Academy Awards.
Coral is a filmic song cycle that follows a cohort of sleepless solitaries through the night of a lunar eclipse. Strange singing and luminous images make mythopoesis of their labors and losses. In a boardwalk café, they convene for respite from their surreal nocturnal rituals, shot through with birds, salt, and violin rosin.
The film has been making a splash on the festival circuit, having recently been selected for the Currents section of the New York Film Festival.
Sonia Oleniak is a filmmaker who was raised in three cultures and countries: Poland, France, and California in the United States. She holds an MFA in Film from Columbia University’s School of the Arts and a BA from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television with a concentration in Multimedia and Theater Direction. She recently participated in the La Fémis Producing Atelier & Cannes Film Market and is currently developing her first feature, a film adaptation of The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington.
Her producer, Constanza Maljuf, is a Chilean filmmaker based in the US with over ten years’ experience. Eager to promote collaboration with womxn filmmakers worldwide, she has participated in projects in Chile, Spain, Perú, Cuba, and the US. The first time she walked onto a set was as part of the cast in The Motorcycle Diaries by Walter Salles. This marked the beginning of a career dedicated to filming on set, as an actress, assistant director, or producer, alongside acclaimed directors such as Eli Roth, Vincenzo Marra, Pablo Larraín, Sebastián Brahm and Cristián Jiménez, among others.
Eda Çarikçi is known for Öte (2023), Mendirek (2022) and Sentimental Journey.
