Festival celebrates Polish culture in Paris

From November 16 to 28, 2026, the Un Week-end à l’Est festival returns to Paris for its tenth edition, this time honoring Cracovie. Organized by director Krystian Lupa, the event will take over thirty Parisian locations and feature 150 guests and 65 events spanning literature, theater, cinema, music, dance, and visual arts. The festival explores themes of memory, creation, and contemporary upheavals, with a strong focus on Polish literature in its most daring forms, including committed poetry, science fiction, and feminist writings.

Poetry event highlights female voices

On Saturday, November 21, the Maison de la Poésie hosts two events under the title La Poésie en mode urgence. At 7 p.m., two generations of female poets meet: Ewa Lipska, a figure of the Polish New Wave, and Małgorzata Lebda, whose first novel, Vorace (Noir sur Blanc, 2026), has just been published in French. Their dialogue, animated by journalist Elisabeth Philippe, will be followed at 8:30 p.m. by a musical reading: the Franco-Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland will lend her voice to their texts, accompanied by musician Maria Sławek.

Feminist themes explored in literary discussion

On Sunday, November 22, at 3 p.m., a change of tone on the barge Nanna with Agnieszka Szpila. Writer, screenwriter, and activist, this provocative figure of Polish letters has been noticed with Hexes (Notabilia/Noir sur Blanc, 2024), finalist of the Nike Prize and the Inrockuptibles Prize. Her new work, Octopussy (Notabilia/Noir sur Blanc, 2026), translated like the previous one by Cécile Bocianowski, continues a reflection on feminism, domination relationships, and the ecological crisis. Under the title Le sexe et l'imagination au pouvoir, the meeting, animated by Caroline Pernes, journalist at Télérama, will address this literary universe as irreverent as abundant.

Science fiction author discusses new novel

Another highlight, Saturday, November 21 at 4 p.m., at the Librairie Polonaise: a meeting with Jacek Dukaj, considered the heir of Stanisław Lem and one of the great figures of contemporary science fiction in Poland. After La Vieillesse de l'axolotl (Rivages, 2024), the writer returns to French bookstores with D'autres chants (Rivages, 2026), translated by Charles Zaremba. This novel imagines an alternative Europe where the Aristotelian theories of Form and Matter govern reality. Its protagonist, Hieronim Berbelek, travels through a fantastic universe, from the Library of Alexandria to a lunar colony, against a backdrop of revenge and identity quest. Between philosophical speculation, uchronia, and scientific vertigo, this meeting titled La forme et la matière : les odyssées fantastiques de Jacek Dukaj will be animated by Frédérique Roussel, journalist at Libération.