Proud

Poland's entry in the 2026 Series Mania international competition took both the Grand Prize and Best Actor, for Ignacy Liss — the strongest showing by a Polish series at the Lille festival since it became the continent's main television market. Made for HBO Max, it runs eight episodes of roughly forty minutes.

Liss plays Filip, a gay man in his late twenties whose life has been organised, quite deliberately, so that nobody depends on him. A sudden death in the family leaves him responsible for an infant niece, and the series follows what that does to his friendships, his work and his sense of who he was planning to be. Maja Ostaszewska, one of the most recognisable actors in Polish cinema, appears alongside a largely young cast.

What the Series Mania jury singled out was the refusal of the obvious shape: this is not a redemption arc in which a selfish man is improved by a child, and the series is candid about how much of caring for someone is administrative, exhausting and unchosen. It arrives at a moment when Polish television is producing more internationally legible drama than at any point since the state broadcaster's monopoly ended.