They live in the Warsaw district of Wola, in a social housing estate inhabited by alcoholics and people living in the margins of society. Who got a chance, moved out of the estate. The building will soon be torn down, only those who have nowhere else to go stay in it. Among them are Bartek and Paweł. They have known each other for years and were inseparable. Growing up in an orphanage, 21 year old Bartek, came to live with his alcoholic parents when he turned 18. Paweł is a couple of years older than Bartek, and when he was a teenager, he became a father. He lives cooped up in a tiny apartment with his partner and daughter. Bartek works in a poultry slaughterhouse and wraps up meat all day long. Paweł is jobless, he is an amateur boxing coach and wants to practice mixed martial arts professionally. Soon he is to take part in his first illegal fight for money.
A beginner, Bartosz M. Kowalski is not looking for sociological simplifications. It is evident that he is not interested in film journalism but rather in a tale about human emotions, dreams and hopes. Although Moja Wola / A Dream in the Making presents the difficult paths of the people pushed into the margins of society, whose opportunities for self-realisation were restricted from the beginning his film puts people not problems in the centerstage.
One day Bartek decides to enroll in a school for stuntmen. His parents pay no attention to his plans and his brother, who just got out of prison, laughs at his idea. The only person supporting him is Pawel. Together they start running and dueling to prepare Bartek for the entry exam. At this point of the movie, Kowalski shows what is hidden behind the boys vulgarity and track suits - their romantic nature and sensitivity.
This film came to be thanks to a series of random events. In 2010, as the second director, Bartosz M. Kowalski was making a student film in Warsaw's Wola. For one of the scenes he needed two, dangerous looking boys. The locals helped him find Paweł, Bartek and his brother, who played in the film. Interested in the school for stuntmen, the boys later invited the filmmaker out for a beer hence sparking Kowalski's interested in making the documentary.
A Dream in the Making is yet another debut documentary produced by the Polish HBO, which is a TV station supporting young documentary makers. The pulsing, rhythmical, melancholic and discreet music to the film, created by the renowned American composer Angelo Badalamenti (author of the soundtrack to Twin Peaks) leads the viewer through the world of housing estates.
"The most important thing to me was to show the feelings of the protagonists, their most intimate emotions. I wanted the viewer to get to know these boys, to be able to understand them," Bartosz M. Kowalski says about his work. A Dream in the Making is an invitation to a world overcome with poverty and pathology. But the young director's documentary is more than a postcard from a sad reality, it is also a story about big dreams. One of the final scenes where Bartek, dressed as a soldier performing a stunt, smiles back to the man who decided to film his dreams is a touching and cleansing moment.
Source: culture.pl
Editor: Marta Jazowska