Photo: Michal Rosa's What the Sun Has Seen
In the Polish city of Silesia, teenage single mother and aspiring singer Marta (Dominika Kluzniak) sells tennis kits on the street in order to raise enough money to travel to Norway, where, according to a shady travel agent, a decent job awaits. In the same town square where she works, young Seba (Damian Hryniewicz) hawks garlic from a folding table with his father, lusts after Marta, who resembles his deceased mother, and periodically returns home to report the day's sales to Mom's grave, located in a cemetery that sits just outside his bedroom window. Meanwhile, Jozef (Krzysztof Stroinski) passes out flyers while wearing a chicken suit so he can pay for orthodontia work for his wife (Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak), whose teeth were ruined due to a car accident he caused. Disappointment mars their tough lives, but monotonous, unfocused drama and insufficiently developed, largely uninteresting characters tarnish Rosa's grimly realistic depiction of their minor triumphs and not-so-minor difficulties. Nick Schager
In the Polish city of Silesia, teenage single mother and aspiring singer Marta (Dominika Kluzniak) sells tennis kits on the street in order to raise enough money to travel to Norway, where, according to a shady travel agent, a decent job awaits. In the same town square where she works, young Seba (Damian Hryniewicz) hawks garlic from a folding table with his father, lusts after Marta, who resembles his deceased mother, and periodically returns home to report the day's sales to Mom's grave, located in a cemetery that sits just outside his bedroom window. Meanwhile, Jozef (Krzysztof Stroinski) passes out flyers while wearing a chicken suit so he can pay for orthodontia work for his wife (Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak), whose teeth were ruined due to a car accident he caused. Disappointment mars their tough lives, but monotonous, unfocused drama and insufficiently developed, largely uninteresting characters tarnish Rosa's grimly realistic depiction of their minor triumphs and not-so-minor difficulties. Nick Schager
