← Work / Case 02
(Nie)zwykły
Manhattan
Sixteen floors of one building as a structure for the story of a city.
A feature-length documentary about Wrocław's Manhattan, designed by Jadwiga Grabowska-Hawrylak — a modernist architectural icon and, at the same time, a living neighbourhood. The building's floors became the backbone for the residents' stories, the memory of the city, and everyday life in the neighbourhood today.
Context and idea
( Context )
A modernist icon and an everyday neighbourhood in one. Grabowska-Hawrylak's Manhattan is both a work of architecture and a place where ordinary life happens — a point where the memory of the city meets the present.
( Idea )
Instead of a story only about architecture — a film about the people within that architecture. The building's structure (floor by floor) drives the narrative and joins individual stories into a portrait of the place.
( KOVA's role )
( Deliverables )
( Research → Public Story )
Research that became a nationwide story.
The idea came from the KOVA team — raised at a joint meeting with the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław. We led a public search, together with the museum, for the woman in Chris Niedenthal's famous 1982 photograph.
Local and national media picked up the story. Aneta Dienstag-Mroczkowska met Chris Niedenthal, and her story entered the film. The research became part of the premiere, the PR, and the story itself.
( Distribution )
From pre-premiere
to VOD
Pre-premiere screening — a free screening in the atrium of Pasaż Grunwaldzki, right in the middle of the neighbourhood.
World premiere — the 19th Millennium Docs Against Gravity, "Places" section, Dolnośląskie Centrum Filmowe.
Second festival screening — Dolnośląskie Centrum Filmowe.
Multiple broadcasts on TVP Kultura — from January to December 2024.
Press spread "Architektura jak z filmu / Architecture like in a film".
DAFilms / Doc Alliance (active film page).
( Outcome )
The film didn't end with the credits.
A pre-premiere in the middle of the neighbourhood, a world premiere at MDAG, TVP Kultura broadcasts from January to December 2024, international VOD, and a nationwide earned-media campaign that found the film's protagonist. Development → festival → television → VOD: a full cycle in the hands of an independent producer.
( Next )
Szczęśliwa 8