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It will be a bittersweet experience for cinematographer Piotr Sobociński Jr. when he visits our city for the first time this weekend. His father, Piotr Sobociński, died in Vancouver in 2001, at the peak of a career that included shooting for Krzysztof Kieślowski. He was only 43 years old.

“I think for Piotr it’ll be a very touching experience,” says Vancouver Polish Film Festival cofounder Rafal Czekajlo, whose partner at VPFF, Jendrek Kowalski, in fact worked with the elder Sobociński on that final film. “He met him on the Friday,” Czekajlo continues, talking to the Georgia Straight by phone. “Sunday, he got the message that Piotr Sobociński had died in the hotel.”

For Sobociński Jr., cinema is the family business. Grandfather Witold Sobociński shot dozens of features, including Roman Polanski’s Frantic and Andrzej Wajda’s 1975 foreign-language Oscar nominee The Promised Land, “one of the greatest masterpieces of Polish cinema”, in the words of Czekajlo, who programmed The Promised Land along with Wajda’s 1958 classic Ashes and Diamonds into this year’s event.

Mother Hanna Mikuć counts 1984’s cult hit Sexmission among her acting credits, and brother Michal is also a working DOP. But it’s the rising star Piotr who arrives at VPFF with two new features, both playing on the festival’s opening night at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre, this Friday (October 19).

Screening at 7:15 p.m., Breaking the Limits is a certified crowd pleaser about triathlete Jerzy Górski, a national hero in Poland who overcame extreme drug addiction and a crippling road accident to become world double Ironman champion in 1990. The film has its flaws, but they’re forgivable, given the brisk direction by Łukasz Palkowski and a charismatic turn by The Lure’s Jakub Gierszal, embodying Górski from near-death junkie and inveterate troublemaker to, as one character says, “young god”.

Following a Q&A, the second of Sobociński’s films, Silent Night, screens at 9:55 p.m., although patrons are urged to catch “First Pole on Mars” at the very start of the evening’s program (6 p.m.). Agnieszka Elbanowska’s charming short introduces us to Kazimierz Błaszczak, a man determined to make it onto the crew of the Mars One mission, despite being spectacularly ill-equipped at a pot-bellied 68 years old. It’s a good indication of the kind of variety salted across VPFF by Czekajlo and his partners. Along with the Wajda presentations, Saturday’s schedule includes the war drama Squadron 303 and a short concert by violinist Maria Harding and pianist Sylvia Karwowska.

Sunday brings the drama A Cat With a Dog, followed by a Q&A with actor Bozena Stachura, plus the comedy Mug and period romance The Butler.

Prior to all that, the Straight recommends Via Carpatia, screening at 1:10 p.m. Klara Kochańska and Kasper Bajon’s crisp feature debut sends the couple Julia and Piotr (plus their pet turtle) on an uncomfortable journey to the refugee camps of the Macedonian-Greek border, where Piotr’s long-errant and presumably Muslim father is said to be camped out. Set just after the 2016 Bastille Day truck attack in Nice, the film is described on a title card as an imaginary story set in a real world. Certainly, in the self-loathing and less than intrepid figure of Piotr, we have a character, perhaps a little too identifiable, who would prefer the real world to stay out of his way.

There’s much more besides all this, including a few more shorts and an awards ceremony—although that’s as ostentatious as it gets for a minifest, now in its seventh year, described by its own founder as “a small event with a really nice atmosphere”. Adds Czekajlo, endearingly: “There are no red carpets or that kind of thing. We do this festival as a group of friends.”

The Vancouver Polish Film Festival takes place at SFU’S Goldcorp Centre for the Arts from Friday to Sunday (October 19 to 21).