Documentary film. Director and screenplay: Ewa Świecińska, 2001.
Ireneusz Migdał, 34 years old, has a wife and two daughters. He loves them very much and is a happy man. He also likes his job, which he has been doing for over eleven years. He completed technical college. When he was not admitted to the Polish Philology Department at a University, he went to serve in the army. Then, his world ended - his father died. When he looked at his dead father for a while, he was frightened. It was not him, he was pale and wore a suit he never used to wear. Ireneusz suffered a shock, took up extramural studies in Theology and started to work in the hospital's boiler room. One day he heard about a vacant position in the morgue and decided to take it. Initially, things were not easy, but he soon became convinced that it is the right job for him, since it offered peace and relief. He likes to think of his work as a kind of a penance. The dead are humane to him till the very end. He treats them the way he wishes his father would have be treated. But recently he has discovered something that broke the "seductive" tranquillity of the morgue. He finds himself a new passion - scuba diving. Underwater he can hear his own breath and the blood pumping through his veins. He feels alive.
"The film's images shock the viewer while its voice-over narrative is calming. This perturbing confrontation serves the purpose of shock therapy. Suddenly, we see our lives from the point of view of the physical end. A perspective which is unusual and unsettling, and at the same time piercingly universal, though we try not to remember it. So when the whole world persuades us that death is none of our concern, when commercials scream about new medications that provide health and eternal life, Ireneusz Migdal declares in a calm voice that it is all the other way round. Is he scaring us? No, he rather wants us to think about the way we spend the time we have remaining." (Lech Kurpiewski)
- Balsamista / The Embalmer. Poland, 2001.Director and screenplay: Ewa Świecińska. Cinematography: Jacek Sztański. Music consultant: Andrzej Milanowski. Sound: Marcin Pilich. Editing: Ewa Różewicz. Producer: Ireneusz Niewolski. Production: Telewizja Polska Program 1. Color, 25 min.
Awards:
- Finalist Award at the New York Festival, 2002.
Source: the catalogue "Young Polish Cinema", published by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, June 2007