The head of the addiction ward in one of the Warsaw hospitals, Doctor Piotr (Paweł Królikowski) struggles with his patients' problems as well as his own, dark and secret, past. Called to the admissions, he recognizes his long-lost, adult son Kamil (Lesław Żurek) among the patients. The son treats him as a stranger, but Piotr decides to renew their ties, visits him at his house and invites to a joint visit at grandma's house. Piotr's current partner, Hanka (the Czech film star Anna Geislerova), has known nothing about Kamil and now realizes that Piotr is a great mystery to her. Did she suspect, however, that this mystery could surpass her? When one of Piotr's patients commits suicide, he suffers a breakdown, does not return home, visits old friends and - like them - reaches out for heroine. The drug bender excludes him from professional life, destroys a successful relationship and magnifies the sense of being lost. Who will help him to return to living among people?
Hel / Rebound is a feature debut of Kinga Dębska's, a journalist and documentary film maker, graduate of the FAMU Film and TV School in Prague where she studied under Jiři Menzl. Its Polish title is a slang term for heroin; it is also a word for hell in the Nordic mythology. The English title, "Rebound", is a medical term meaning the return of the symptoms after the drying treatment has been discontinued, but Dębska does not want her film to be seen only as a picture about drug addicts:
To me it is first of all a film about human weakness, about our inability to control ourselves and about the world surpassing us. Even though we can help others - or so it seems to us - we are often unable to come to terms with ourselves, says Dębska in an interview for the magazine Kino (no. 4/2010).
Hel reveals a filmmaking passion and a flair for the documentary. The characters are distinct, the background details realistic (the hospital shots were taken in a disused hospital), the events and emotional reactions probable. Credit for this goes largely to the carefully selected cast for both leading and supporting roles. Among the patients are the singer Maciej Maleńczuk, who is known for his unconventional behaviour, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Stanisław Manturzewski, who once conducted sociological research in psychiatric wards, and actor and producer Bartłomiej Topa. But the main weight is on Paweł Królikowski's shoulders.
Królikowski, who was first noticed twenty years ago when he played the title role in Pantarej, a film about a young drug addict, acts in a naturalistic, though subdued, manner and forces his partners to behave likewise. What is important, he does not act as a victim of addiction, but as a man who tries to live with it. He keeps fighting until it is too much for him, and loses, but in the last act of consciousness he still harbours hope of a return to society. And return he does, even though will itself is not always sufficient.
The feature debut by a documentary filmmaker impresses with its maturity and its clever approach to a topic which, although not easy, does not overwhelm", writes Lech Moliński in an account of the 2009 Era Nowe Horyzonty 2009 Festival, where "Hel" was premiered, for the portal www.stopklatka.pl. "Maybe it is because it is not played on a single note - accents which diffuse tension appear where appropriate. Sentimentality is avoided, too, and the final message, while highly synthetic and relevant for the dominant subject of drugs, can also be read much more universally.
And Michael Brooke from the British Film Institute observes on his Kinoblog dedicated to filmmaking in Eastern and Central Europe:
...there was a lot to admire, not least Paweł Królikowski's central performance (...) the scenes in the hospitals (shot on location) (...) the characterisation of Piotr's various patients uncomfortably plausible (...) and the emphasis on drab realism doesn't completely preclude the occasional injection of gallows humour, such as the straightfaced announcement that hospital goldfish are for admiring rather than eating.
Hel won the Special Award at the Prowincjonalia 2010 National Film Art Festival.
- Hel / Rebound, Poland-Czech 2009. Written and directed by Kinga Dębska; photography by Wojciech Staroń; music by Marcin Kuczewski; art manager: Marek Zawierucha; costumes by Małgorzata Obłoza; sound by Leszek Freund; edited by Ewa Romanowska-Różewicz. Starring Paweł Królikowski (Piotr), Anna Geislerova (Hanka), Lesław Żurek (Kamil), Magda Biegańska (Maria), Anna Gornostaj (Marta), Henryk Talar (Weiss), Bartosz Żukowski (Mały), Stanisław Manturzewski (Ludwik the patient), Maciej Maleńczuk (Mirek the patient), Monika Kwiatkowska-Dejczer (Ewa the patient), Bartłomiej Topa (Radek the patient), Janusz Chabior (Malec the patient). Produced by the Studio Filmowe Kalejdoskop - In Film Praha. Co-financed by the Polish Film Institute. Distribution: Kino Świat. Duration: 85 min. Released on 23rd April 2010.
Written by Konrad J. Zarębski, March 2010.