Still-frame from 3 Days of Freedom
Radek Franczak's Losing Sonia and Łukasz Borowski's 3 days of freedom premiere at one of Switzerland's foremost film festivals on the main competition programme
Franczak's film, which is screened on the 22nd and 23rd of April, is a documentary which depicts a seemingly rigid monastery as a place full of life, beauty and artistic expression. Sonia, a young nun, paints icons in the night and then sleeps until noon. She owns a dog, cats, exotic birds, and a body which has rebelled against the strict rigour of the convent. Trying to understand her and tracing her life choices, we come across the young nun’s family. This story of Sonia’s ancestors is strongly marked by the history of Russia. Through the narrative of the family, the film also depicts the story of the Greek Orthodox church, and the contemporary renaissance of Russian nation's deep spirituality. Losing Sonia portrays the life of an unusual woman who attempts to rebuild the values lost by Russian society under successive political regimes within the walls of the monastery.
The director says of his encounter with Sonia:
It was while I was searching for people for my documentary about Russian women. I found myself in a monastery in Ivanovo. By chance we were brought to a workshop of ‘the artists’. The artists were nuns who paint icons. Although there were many women, I only saw one. She was sitting in front of an easel and licking her lips intently, while painting an icon. ... She was constantly looking through the window and smiling to herself. After a while she began telling me how, at the age of 15, she discovered a great hunger for beauty. And from that moment, all of her choices were focused on that ‘something’ that she needed to be close to. I wanted to find out what that ‘something’ that Sonia couldn’t live without was (source: www.wajdaschool.pl).
Losing Sonia is on the programme in the medium-length film competition. Radka Franczak is a graduate of the Documentary Course at the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film and the film is her debut medium-length feature.
Łukasz Borowski’s short documentary 3 Days of Freedom enjoys its European premiere showing on the 25th of April, with a second presentation following on the 26th. 3 Days of Freedom is screened as part of the Visions du Réel's International Competition. The protagonist of the film is Piotr, a prisoner who receives a three-day pass, following fifteen years spent in jail. In this bitter debut film, Łukasz Borowski follows Piotr during the few hours he spends in the free outside world. This is an experience lived in the immediate present, and the camera accompanies Piotr as he savours every minute of his existence, while trying to avoid the dizzying sense a time irredeemably lost.
Borowski’s film has already received the Grand Prix of the Etiuda & Anima Festival in Kraków (in the Festival’s short-film section) as well as the Best Polish Short Film Award at the New Horizons Festival in Wrocław. The New Horizons Festival award entailed a €2,500 prize, and the film was lauded by the jury for its "overall maturity and the focus put on the main character’s sincere response to the short-term freedom."
Łukasz Borowski explains that he came across the story by chance. He states in an interview with Adrianna Bogdziewicz :
I read a newspaper article about a foundation which helps prisoners return to a normal life following many years of imprisonment. I was interested how people after several decades of isolation look at our world. What surprises them? What shocks them? What has really changed over the years? I've come to the conclusion that the hero of the long sentence will look at the world around us in a fresh and clean way. Like a child.
Both films have been produced by the Wajda Studio in Warsaw.
The Swiss Film Festival was started up in 1969, and it had gone through its first phase of artistic development by the end of the 1970s. The Festival continued to evolve, and in 1995 it was renamed "Visions du Réel". It quickly made a name for itself as one of the most important rendez-vous of speciality cinema, both in Switzerland and on the international scene.
The 2012 edition of Visions du Réel will be held in the city of Nyon between the 20th and 27th of April.
For more information and a complete programme, see: www.visionsdureel.ch
Roberto Galea
Source: Press release, Wajda Film School