Actors Marian Dziędziel and Borys Szyc who play the father and son in Rafael Lewandowski's "The Mole"
A son whose life hangs by a thread when he discovers that his father is not the person he thought he was. A Solidarity hero accused of having been a secret Communist informer, Rafael Lewandowski’s The Mole makes its appearance in French cinemas
A Polish-French filmmaker with an award winning Polish-French coproduction, Rafael Lewandowski created a story about 30 year old Paweł who runs a second hand clothing business with his father. Importing used garments from France to Poland, the men’s lives change when they discover the father’s photo captioned ‘the mole’ in a tabloid. Paweł’s life turns upside down when his image of his father the Solidarity hero of the 1980s turns to shatters. In a Poland where years after the transition the past continues to haunt the present the young man eagerly tries to discover the truth, "A film that takes a look at the difficulty of finding out the truth about the past and how this can be an impediment to future progress" the filmmaker adds.
Polish film critics have praised The Mole for its sequences of dialogues which are "natural and melodic. When the camera lens slides into the kitchen to record a common meal, we feel as if we were entering someone’s microworld made up of minimalistic gests and looks. Here, the family is the family and not a collective of actors blabbing the text of the script" Filmweb’s Łukasz Muszyński comments. The film and its actors have received several awards, among others the Public Award and the Award of the French Union of Film Critic Journalists at the Arras Festival. In January 2012, Rafael Lewandowski won the Passport Award in the category Film given out by the newspaper Polityka.
The Mole is Rafael Lewandowski’s feature debut, until recently the filmmaker directed documentaries, "I have been making movies for 25 years now,", he says in an interview for TVP Info, "The first one was shot when I was 16. Directing is more than a career, it’s a life passion full of emotions." The director, born in a French-Polish family attended a musical school and later studied Cinematography at the Sorbonne and the Film School La Fémis. He is the author of several documentaries, among others Shadow on the Soul / Cień na duszy and The Hearing / Przesłuchanie, a documentary about the work of journalists during the trial of a WWII collaborator Maurice Papon. In 2005 he filmed a documentary about the children of ex-activists of the first free Central European trade union Song and Life / Piosenka i życie.
The Mole’s pre-premiere takes place at the Le Balzac Cinema in Paris on September 6th 2012. Website: Le Balzac
The Mole's official French website: La Dette, le film
Sources: culture.pl
Author: Marta Jazowska