The Turning Point: Polish Film in 2021

hiacynt_-_bartosz_mrozowski.jpeg, default, Tomasz Ziętek in the film 'Operation Hyacinth' by Piotr Domalewski, photo: Bartosz Mrozowski

#film

The year 2021 brought some surprises and artistic discoveries to Polish cinema, giving hope for a better tomorrow. It also showed what threats and financial changes await us in the near future.

Closed cinemas and pandemic restrictions, sanitary movie sets and a disrupted financial ecosystem. This is only part of the truth about what 2021 looked like in Polish cinema. Because although there was no shortage of reasons to worry, and the country’s film industry faces a need to redefine itself today, the past 12 months have brought many positive surprises and artistic revelations.

Revelations

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Teściowie - oficjalny zwiastun (official trailer)

Let's start with the greatest of them, namely the most unexpected and, at the same time, spectacular success on the domestic cinema market. We are talking about The In-Laws (‘Teściowie’ in Polish), a comedy by Kuba Michalczuk, whose full-length debut attracted well over 400,000 viewers to the cinema in difficult times. Michalczuk, who was previously known mainly as an advertising writer, reached for the theatre script by Marek Modzelewski and created a comedy that seduced with its unpretentiousness, its acting performances by Izabela Kuna and Adam Woronowicz, as well as ... director's dysentery. Because Michalczuk, unlike many of his older colleagues, decided to give his film character and style, not hiding behind ‘zero style’. The result turned out to be one of the most-watched films of the year, and at the same time proof that the audience can appreciate good craftsmanship, and word of mouth can provide greater success than paid promotion.

Michalczuk was not the only director who entered the cinema with a bang in the last 12 months. Tomasz Habowski, whose Songs about Love (‘Piosenki o Miłości’) was one of the greatest discoveries at the Gdynia Film Festival, also had a great start. Made for very little money, co-financed by the Polish Film Institute under the so-called ‘microbudget’ programme, Songs about Love turned out to be a triumph of sensitivity and cinematic lyricism. Subtly told, superbly played, they once again proved (as with last year's Love Tasting [‘Ostatni Komers’] by David Nickel) that in the cinema sometimes less is more, and real emotions do not need a multi-million setting.

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POWRÓT DO TAMTYCH DNI - oficjalny zwiastun

Emotional strength also determined the success of another revelation from this year's Gdynia: A Return to Those Days (‘Powrót do Tamtych Dni’) by Konrad Aksinowicz. The director, who for years has been looking for his place on the edge of art house, this time created a film that leaves no doubt as to the scale of his talent. This personal story about alcoholism, childhood and facing difficult reality is absolutely sincere, painfully true cinema, but at the same time told with tenderness.

New masters?

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Tomasz Ziętek and Tomasz Schuchardt in "Hyacinth" by Piotr Domalewski, photo: Bartosz Mrozowski

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If Michalczuk, Habowski and Aksinowicz are to be considered the greatest directorial revelations of the past months, then the following creators of film successes from 2021 should be referred to as young ‘masters’ of Polish cinema.

One of them today is certainly Piotr Domalewski. Although he has ‘only’ released three full-length films (as well as a series, television theatre and a few other productions), he must be mentioned among the most important Polish directors. Hyacinth, a gay crime drama for Netflix, only confirms his class. Domalewski is not afraid of genre experiments and is willing to open up to new stories. With a great script by Marcin Ciastoń, it’s one of the best films to be released in Poland in recent months.

Artistic class has also been confirmed in recent months by another ‘young and talented’ Polish filmmaker: Łukasz Grzegorzek. His My Wonderful Life (‘Moje Wspaniałe Życie’) is the story of a 40-year-old woman who realises one day that she has fallen into the trap of meeting other people's expectations. The young director tells her story in a unique, unmistakable way. He combines irony with tenderness, distance with emotional commitment, and the film’s light form does not exclude the importance of the topics discussed. Grzegorzek has his own style and his own film world, one to which you want to come back and where you can always hear an interesting and moving story.

Among those who were mixing it up on the domestic film market in 2021, two more should be mentioned – Łukasz Ronduda and Łukasz Gutt, winners of the Golden Lion at the Gdynia Film Festival for Fears (‘Wszystkie Nasze Strachy’). Based on the real-life Daniel Rycharski, an artist who is both deeply religious and gay, this is a story about an ideological cracked Poland and chances for reconciliation between feuding tribes. The modest film, told in a whisper, is another picture that confirms that Ronduda (for Gutt, an otherwise excellent cinematographer, it was a directorial debut) today belongs to the most interesting voices and personalities of Polish cinema.

Disappointments

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WESELE - oficjalny zwiastun nowego filmu Wojtka Smarzowskiego

The past 12 months have not been as fruitful for everyone equally. Although 2021 was on the whole successful for Polish cinema, there were also great disappointments.

The director of the greatest was Wojtek Smarzowski, who returned to the big screen with The Wedding (‘Wesele’), a story about contemporary Poland, painful history, and the genocide in Jedwabne. In telling this story, Smarzowski sacrificed drama and truth on the altar of political and historical education. His film was marked by a journalistic tone and an unbearable paternalism towards his native audience. He painted a caricature of Poles and treated the story as an axe for hitting the head of unsuspecting viewers. Although Smarzowski remains the most important filmmaker in Polish cinema from the last two decades, this only makes his latest effort certainly the most painful film disappointment from recent months.

Amongst the film failures of the past year, a special place goes to Autumn Girl (in Polish ‘Bo we Mnie Jest Seks’, literally the more provocative ‘Because There is Sex in Me’) by Katarzyna Klimkiewicz, the long-awaited film biography of Kalina Jędrusik. The story of the ‘coloured bird’ of the People's Republic of Poland, a sex symbol and one of the most unobvious artists of Polish cinema and the communist era, here is transformed into an unfulfilled feminist fairy tale. In a tale about one of the most interesting Polish women of his era, Klimkiewicz also reveals his own idea – instead of a story about independence, he serves us a story about a woman addicted to men's decisions and deprived of any efficient energy. And although the film portrait of Jędrusik tries to defend itself thanks to the great acting of Maria Dębska and the directorial style of Klimkiewicz, it still turns out to be a disappointingly conservative work. A pity.

The third of our big disappointments, Mateusz Rakowicz’s The Getaway King (‘Najmro’), also leaves us unsatisfied. Inspired by the real-life Zdzisław Najmrodzki, a criminal famous for his numerous escapes from justice, Rakowicz’s film turns out to be a riot of colourful scenes and spectacular gags, but devoid of script discipline and drama. Although there has been nothing as equally stylish in Polish cinema in 2021, the script shortcomings make it a classic illustration of the excess of film form over dramatic content.

Victims of the pandemic

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Najmro. Kocha, kradnie, szanuje - Zwiastun PL (Official Trailer)

The past year has seen several painful failures in Polish cinema. But what influenced and continues to influence Polish cinema the most were not artistic ups and downs, but the coronavirus pandemic, which called into question the continued functioning of the entire film industry in its known shape. It was the cinemas that were among the first to fall victim to the restrictions – closed to the public, and then alternately opened and closed by the authorities, for many existing customers at once becoming a place of increased risk. In 2021, the cinema audience shrank sharply and it took the premieres of world hits (like Dune and No Time to Die) for the cinema industry to feel it could again look to the future with hope.

However, the prose of cinema life read completely differently, and many Polish directors and producers fell victim to the unpredictability of the market. The pandemic has hit everyone, even those who have achieved relative success. It’s easy to imagine how much better the box office’s results would be if it were not for the multiple waves of the coronavirus and the sanitary restrictions that accompanied them. Najmro attracted less than 300,000 viewers to Polish cinemas, while in previous years it could certainly have counted on an audience of around one million. The aforementioned The In-Laws by Kuba Michalczuk, the biggest surprise of the Polish box office, instead of 400,000 viewers, could have counted on a group of recipients two or three times larger.

Missing in action

Pandemic restrictions have left many feature films almost unnoticed. You would have had to watch the Polish cinema market very carefully in order not to miss the premieres of films like the award-winning and accomplished Amateurs (‘Amatorzy’)by Iwona Siekierzyńska, which barely appeared in cinematic repertoires before quickly disappeared again from posters. Or the debut The City (‘Miasto’) by Marcin Sauter, one of the most talented Polish documentary filmmakers making his first full-length feature after many years behind the camera. Unfortunately, his film passed unnoticed, and only its premiere on the popular streaming service VOD.pl made many moviegoers aware that such a film was made at all. In recent months, similar stories have accompanied the premieres of experienced artists, like The Republic of Children (‘Republika Dzieci’) by Jan Jakub Kolski and the long-awaited Speedway (‘Żużel’) by Dorota Kędzierzawska, both of which went unnoticed.

But their failure in the aisles was not only the result of pandemic restrictions and changing consumer habits. It was also due to the disturbed balance of the domestic distribution market. In uncertain times, distributors decided to minimize risk and… losses. They did not invest a lot of money in advertising and promotion, and some films were released to cinemas ‘out of force’ rather than as a result of business decisions. This is all thanks to the system of subsidies developed by the Polish Film Institute, and more precisely their provisions about their subsidies (and the receipt of full funding) conditional on the film being introduced to cinema distribution. In order to settle the funds received from the Polish Film Institute within the allotted year of funding and to keep public balance sheets happy, some producers decide to bring about the premiere of their films at any cost – even at the cost of attendance failure.

Blessed slavery

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W lesie dziś nie zaśnie nikt 2 | Zwiastun | Netflix

2021 has shown that the current model of film distribution has run its course. This second year of life in the shadow of a pandemic has made audiences unlearn participation in the cinema ritual, and instead more and more willing to reach for movies available on streaming platforms. And the latter has been willing to meet them, offering more and more original productions.Netflix is at the forefront of the pack. After the high viewing figures for their first original productions made on the Polish market (Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight and All My Friends are Dead), Netflix’s producers have doubled down with gusto. In recent months, their repertoire has grown to include Bartkowiak by Daniel Markowicz, a B-class action movie aping the successes of Patryk Vega, as well as the artistically satisfying Operation Hyacinth by Piotr Domalewski and the festive David and the Elves by Michał Rogalski. And this is just the beginning – already in the middle of the year, Netflix announced that in 2022 its portfolio would include another ten original films, and in 2023 another twelve Polish premieres prepared under their giant global wings.

The growing role of Netflix, combined with the crisis in traditional cinema distribution, is changing the way people think about film production. Producers, who so far had seen in cinemas an opportunity for financial success and certain reimbursement of costs incurred, today have to adapt to the new situation. On the one hand, collaboration with large platforms gives them financial security (the entire budget is secured in advance), but it reduces producers to the role of executive producers who, after making the film, give the finished product back and are left unable to profit from its many years of future use.

But this is not the only change brought about by the expansion of the streaming tycoon and the other players in the Polish market who are trying to match it (after all, Ipla and Player, as well as the Scandinavian Viaplay platform, have all started producing films and series). The change of the business landscape brings about changes in repertoire, in which the share of entertainment cinema, tailored according to genre rules and intended to attract mass audiences, is increasing. The makers of comedy, action, gangster and crime films have many potential customers today.

More difficult for ‘difficult’ films

The perspectives for art house cinema look worse. Today, its functioning is possible thanks to the Polish Film Institute, which subsidises so-called ‘difficult movies’. But the financial conditions of the Polish Film Institute also depends on the traditional cinema system. So when cinema attendance decreases and subsequent films sell fewer and fewer tickets, the budget of the state patron shrinks accordingly.

So while we can be relatively calm about the future of Polish genre cinema, artistic films will face a difficult test in the coming years. And although a light of hope may be the increasing production activity from Telewizja Polska (TVP), which is boldly entering into the production and distribution of films, it also involves risk. Their premieres from past months – from Death of Zygielbojm (‘Śmierć Zygielbojma’) by Ryszard Brylski through to Hitler’s Aunt (‘Ciotka Hitlera’) by Michał Rogalski, to The Tenant (‘Lokatorka’) by Michał Otłowski – show that productions signed by TVP, although created for noble and socially important motives, get bogged down under the weight of ideological and propaganda tasks imposed on them by their Woronicza Street headquarters.

Polish cinema is turning a corner today but it’s not at all clear whether everyone will be able to overcome this corner equally quickly and safely. On the one hand, the end of this crisis year gives hope and shows there is definite vitality in Polish cinema, but on the other, it shows that traditionally understood cinema is slowly becoming a thing of the past, and its new model is only just beginning to emerge.

Originally written in Polish, translated by AZ, Jan 2022

Language English

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