Still from Przemyslaw Wojcieszek's "Made in Poland", photo: Epelpol
Hosting a major review of the latest award-winning Polish feature films, documentaries and animations, a Festival of Polish Cinema in Krasnojarsk presents a glimpse into finding meaning in a capitalist and consumerist society
"It turns out that people released from the problems of living, become lost, they become entangled, and they start chasing fantasies", remarks Jan Komasa, director of Suicide Room in an interview for culture.pl. Emotional loneliness and struggle with how to live in a new, post-communist rreality seems to have creeped into the movies screened at the Festival. Przemyslaw Wojcieszek's film Made in Poland from 2010 features a rebellious sixteen year old, a former alter boy old, who lost his faith in God and furiously searches for a new guru in between communist blocks. Along the way he gets in trouble with local gangsters after destroying a car, picks on a wheelchair-bound invalid and meets a girl.
Still from Leszek Dawid's "My Name is Ki", photo: Skorpion Arte
Jan Komasa's feature debut Suicide Room is a cyber thriller about emotional loneliness in a world of material wealth and an addiction to virtual reality and social networks. Dominik, the teenage protagonist has the perfect teenage life: rich parents, many friends and a pretty girlfriend. Yet the material well being seems to create an emotional void which he satisfies by becoming part of a dangerous online network of troubled youths. Drifting further away from reality, he enters the Suicide Room where a group of users discuss their willingness and readiness to commit suicide. Leszek Dawid's My name is Ki is the portrait of a remarkable young women striving not to commit the same mistakes as her mother. Despite being a mother she wants to lead a colourful, fast and intense life. When she meets Miko and starts a difficult relationship, she learns how to love and take responsibility for herself and her son.
Still from Marek Lechki's "Erratum"
feature by first-time director Marek Lechki, Erratum is about redemption and chance. By a twist of fate the thirty-year-old protagonist ends up back in his hometown , the same place he had tried to quietly escape many years earlier. He faces a meeting with his father whom he loathes and pities and has to suffer the consequences of having hit a passer-by. A business trip transforms into a journey within and a discovery that a seemingly organised life had actually reached a crisis point.
Other films screened at the Festival include the 2011 feature film Courage by Greg Zgliński depicting rivalry between two brothers Jerzy and Alfred and their monotonous life which is disrupted by a sudden accident, Anna Kazejak-Dawid's Pigs Fly about the honour of a football fan and Ryszard Brylski's Wonderful Summer Poland's first dark romantic comdey.
The documentary section of the Festival features Bartek Konopka's and Piotr Rosołowski's Oscar-nominated short Rabbit à la Berlin - the story of the rabbits living in the grassy space between the two layers of the Berlin Wall and their fate at the toppling of the wall. Piotr Bernaś presents his motion picture Paparazzi about Przemysław Stoppa’s exciting life as a paparazzi and Tomasz Wolski's newest documentary H20 about the behaviour of people around fountains is also shown.
The Festival also includes an animation section which will run: Anna Błaszczyk's Caracas - a sea story about chasing dreams based on fragments of the short story Youth by Joseph Conrad, Małgorzata Bosek's Gibbon's Island shows how a visit to the zoo is an opportunity to take a closer look at the relations between two people who are close to each other, Wioletta Sowa's Refrains, Mariusz Wilczynski's Kizi Mizi and Mare Serafinski's Idea.
After this years Wisla Festival in Moscow, Krasnojarsk, Siberia's third largets city hosts the second biggest festival presenting a wide variety of Polish films.
For more information see: kulturapolshi.ru, www.filmshouse.ru (in Russian)
Thumbnail credit: Epelpol
Sources: culture.pl
Editor: Marta Jazowska