In 2015 Jerzy Skolimowski turned 77, but he made a film which proves that he is one of the youngest directors in Polish cinema – still hungry, ready to experiment, and searching for innovative forms. 11 Minutes is a film close to formal perfection and proof of the director of Essential Killing's fluency in the craft.
Skolimowski perfectly controls the mood, skilfully fuels a feeling of anxiety, and densely weaves several different stories together. The main characters pass each other on streets near Plac Grzybowski. A place which is so intensely saturated with symbols, is universalised and deprived of its properties, in the film becoming somewhere that we could find in any big European city. Amongst the people wandering the streets of Warsaw in the film are an inconspicuous hot dog vendor (Andrzej Chyra), a drug-addicted courier (Dawid Ogrodnik), a film director (Richard Dormer), a beautiful actress (Paulina Chapko), and her insanely jealous husband (Wojciech Mecwaldowski). Skolimowski shows us 11 Minutes from their lives just as dark clouds are gathering over them. 11 Minutes tells the story of the impossibility of escaping one's fate and its verdicts, about an impending catastrophe and the fragility of human life.
Skolimowski wrote the subsequent acts of this tragedy with confidence. He knows when to speed up and when to slow down the storyline's tempo. The editing by Agnieszka Glińska was particularly impressive. She received a well-deserved Best Editor award at the 40th Film Festival in Gdynia. It is thanks to her that the plots of several strangers merge into one coherent whole and 11 Minutes becomes more intense minute after minute.
Skolimowski’s class as a director is visible in nearly every sequence. The story of the paramedics trying to get into a barricaded apartment is exceptional. Skolimowski presents us with a group of anonymous characters, without sketching any individual portraits or introducing any particular character in order to make us more empathic, and despite this we end up rooting for the characters to overcome their struggles. There is tension, drama and a hopeless race against time.
