Still from 'Róża' by Wojciech Smarzowski
Refugee Week, held from the 17th to the 23rd, is a celebration of the contributions of refugees to the culture of the U.K. With the theme “our history and heritage”, a week-long program of events hopes to “encourage understanding between communities” and offer a perspective on the role refugees have played in shaping contemporary British culture.
The BFI Southbank, with the support of the Polish Cultural Institute, is hosting a screening of Smarzowski’s Róża as part of their Refugee Week film series. Set in summer 1945, Róża exposes viewers to the persecution of Masurians - the people Poland’s Mazury region - who saw their lives irrevocably changed following the postwar relocation of new populations into their communities. This dynamic is embodied in the film's central figure, Róża (Agata Kulesza). The widow of a German soldier, she has been raped and forced into prostitution by Soviet soldiers, then disparaged and abused by postwar settlers to the region, who see her as a German.
Smarzowski described his film to Culture.pl’s Konrad J. Zarębski as,
…a story about love – tough and built on ruins. She is a Masurian, German, Polish perhaps. The term is relative and depends on political manipulation, which was particularly severe at that time. Nonetheless, above all she is a woman who suffered from the Russians and later from the Poles; who experienced tragedy and the worst of humiliations. She is a Pole whose life was ruined by Russians and Germans, by war and occupation. She is a human wreck. A ghost.
The film’s focus on Róża not only offers a powerful perspective on the human suffering accompanying forced migrations, but also speaks to the “universal condition of war which remains the main cause of refugees”. As part of the programme of Refugee Week, Róża is both an emotionally wrought human story and a perspective on a “period of history that gave rise to the 1951 Convention relating to Refugee Status.”
There will be a post-screening panel featuring Roland Schillin, UNHCR's U.K. representative, the writer-filmmaker Mamoun Hassan, the historian Anita Prażmowska, and Tim Finch, the director of communications for IPPR and a political journalist.
The screening will be held at BFI Southbank on Tuesday the 18th of June at 6:20 pm.
For more information, see: https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/rose
Source: culture.pl and Refugee Week, promotional material
Edited by Alena Aniskiewicz