Curator's note: spring selections and why we turned down 80 submissions
Between January and March 2026, our eight curators reviewed 114 titles for potential addition to the PölderPlay library. We added 34. This is a note on that process — specifically, on the 80 we didn't add and why, and on the one film that made everything else seem less urgent.
The Romanian film
I'll start here because it's the reason this note exists. In late February, our Eastern European curator Dagmara Kula sent a 2024 Romanian feature to the group review channel with a brief message: "I don't know what to say about this yet. Just watch it."
The film is called Înainte de Ploaie — Before the Rain, not to be confused with the Milcho Manchevski film of the same name. Directed by a 31-year-old first-time feature director named Andrei Florescu, shot in Bucharest over 22 days on a budget that Dagmara estimates at around €180,000. It's 104 minutes. It's about a woman returning to her childhood apartment to clear it out after her mother's death, and the neighbour who insists on helping her.
That synopsis makes it sound manageable. It is not manageable. Two of our curators cancelled other plans to finish it on the same evening they started it. We don't usually work that way — we watch, we wait, we return. This film didn't allow for waiting.
We licensed it within a week of Dagmara's message. We're adding it in May with a 1,200-word curator's note. I've tried to write that note three times and abandoned each draft. I'll try again next week.
Why we rejected 80 films
The more interesting question, I think, is the 80. Each quarter I read back through our rejection notes, because I find patterns there that are useful for understanding what our library is actually trying to be versus what we imagine it to be.
This quarter, the patterns:
Festival fatigue. About 30 of the 80 rejections were films that had done the festival circuit and arrived to us pre-approved by other institutions — Rotterdam, Cannes, Berlinale selection, etc. We still rejected them. Festival selection is not our selection criterion. Some of these films were well-made and deeply uninteresting. A few were technically accomplished and emotionally manipulative in ways that I find more troubling in art house than in mainstream film, precisely because the art house context offers cover.
The competence trap. About 20 rejections were technically proficient films that had nothing specifically at stake in being the film they were. This is hard to articulate, but I know it when I see it: a film that could have been made by any of a dozen directors, that had no particular reason to exist as the specific thing it is. Technical competence without necessity. We're not interested in that.
Rights and timing. About 15 were films we wanted but couldn't license on acceptable terms, or couldn't license in time for this round. Several of these are in negotiation for autumn. One rights holder insisted on a minimum guarantee we couldn't justify for a single title.
Library duplication. About 10 were films we considered strong but that would have duplicated coverage we already have. We don't need three films about post-industrial Ruhr valley communities. We have two. The third one would need to be considerably better than both to earn its place.
Genuine uncertainty. The remaining 5 are films I still think about. They didn't fit any of the above categories — they weren't bad, they weren't duplicative, rights were manageable. We just couldn't reach consensus. One of them I suspect I'll regret not taking. I'm not ready to say which one yet.
What we added: the themes
The 34 additions break down roughly as: 12 feature films (9 European, 3 from outside our usual geographic focus), 14 documentaries, 8 short films. The short film section was a deliberate push — we've had 95 shorts in the library for two years and hadn't added meaningfully to that number. Dagmara and our Scandinavian curator Kristoffer Lindqvist spent a week going through last year's short film festivals specifically, and the 8 additions are the result of that.
Thematically this round is heavy on landscape — not as backdrop but as subject. Several of the documentaries are about land use, coastal erosion, rewilding, the politics of agricultural transition. This wasn't deliberate programming; it's what was good. I note it because I find it interesting when themes cluster without coordination.
A note on the writing
All 34 additions will have curator's notes by the time they go live. We're currently running about 12 days behind on writing — spring is our busiest period for acquisitions and the writing sometimes lags. If you open a newly added film and find only a placeholder note, it will be replaced within two weeks. We don't publish half-finished notes; if you see one it means a previous addition got an update, not that a new one is incomplete.
The Înainte de Ploaie note will go live simultaneously with the film. I'll get there.