Sundance Documentary 'Closure' Lands U.S. Distribution Ahead of October theatrical Release
1-2 Special has acquired U.S. rights to Closure, Michał Marczak's documentary about a father searching for his missing son along Warsaw's Vistula River, and will release the film in American theatres on 28 October. The deal, reported by Variety on 12 August 2026, ends a distribution search that had been under way since the film's world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.
Closure had its premiere in Sundance's World Cinema Documentary Competition. It follows Daniel Dymiński, whose teenage son Chris vanished in 2023 — last seen by surveillance cameras walking on Warsaw's Gdańsk Bridge. The film tracks Daniel and his wife Agnieszka as they refuse to accept that Chris may never return, combing the Vistula with everything from homemade inventions to GPS trackers and drones (Variety; Variety review, 6 February 2026).
Marczak, a Polish film-maker whose previous feature All These Sleepless Nights won the best director prize in the World Cinema – Documentary section at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, told Variety that Closure was "made for the big screen" and that he was thrilled audiences would experience it that way (Variety). The film is his fourth feature, arriving a decade after All These Sleepless Nights.
The critical response out of Sundance was strong. Variety's Murtada Elfadl called the film "spellbinding" and "a devastating study of love and loss." Rolling Stone named it one of the top films of the festival and hailed Marczak as "one of the best, most expressionistic nonfiction filmmakers working today." IndieWire placed it among the best films at Sundance, calling it "a visceral film that defies the true-crime genre," while RogerEbert.com wrote that it is "such a gorgeously shot film that one could mistake it for fiction" (Variety).
After Sundance, Closure played a string of major documentary festivals: True/False, DC/DOX, Sheffield DocFest, Doc10 in Chicago, and AFS Doc Days. At the Millennium Docs Against Gravity festival in Poland, it won best cinematography, the Silesian Audience Award, and the Arthouse Cinema Association Award. At the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, it took the top Golden Alexander prize — a win that makes the film eligible for submission in the Academy Awards' documentary feature category (Variety).
The film runs 102 minutes and was produced by Monika Braid, Rémi Grellety, Marczak, Katarzyna Szczerba, and Karolina Marczak, with co-production by Sara Skrodzka. Braidmade Films produced in co-production with Warboys Films. Grellety is a two-time Oscar nominee, for I Am Not Your Negro and Soundtrack to a Coup d'État (Variety; Sundance festival page).
Financing came from the Polish Film Institute, with association from Think-Film Impact Production and participation from Bird Street Productions. Additional partners include Canal+ Polska, the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute, the Mazovia Warsaw Film Fund, France Télévisions, Procirep Angoa, and Great Hill (Variety).
For a documentary that spent months looking for a U.S. home after its January premiere, the October date gives 1-2 Special a runway through the autumn festival and awards corridor — the window when documentary Academy voters begin paying attention.
