//

Polish Film Festival 2021: Escape to the Silver Globe, Leave No Traces, Fears, & More

The ’80s haunted this year’s Polish Film Festival, which is billed by its organizers as one of the oldest film events in Europe.

Escape to the Silver Globe
Photo: Archiwum Filmu/Forum

The 46th Polish Film Festival (FPFF), billed by its organizers as “one of the oldest film events in Europe,” took place in Gdynia, Poland, from September 20 to 25. The festival featured a microbudget film series, a shorts program, and a main slate of 16 films that were up for a variety of prizes, including the coveted Golden Lions Grand Prix. This year’s top winner will join the other titles mounted on a frame of the festival mural across the street from the Musical Theatre, where screenings mostly took place, but more importantly, if the past is any indication, its chances of finding distribution have significantly increased.

Certain themes were prominent throughout the main slate. For one, authority figures weren’t subject to the sort of copaganda treatment we’re used to getting in American cinema. Even in the comedies, the law is a terrifying presence, aiming to do the protagonists harm, or worse. In fact, even when the police are presented as heroes, they have a propensity for wrongdoing.

The potential for release in the United States extends to a few films that play here every year. Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Ida both took home the Golden Lions before opening in the U.S. and garnering Oscar nominations. The stars of Cold War were also here, though only one of them was on the screen. Jury member Joanna Kulig evaluated a film featuring Tomasz Kot, or “Tom Cat,” as his name so neatly translates in English. Speaking of translations, all press screenings and specific public screenings were shown with English subtitles.

Advertisement

This year’s hottest ticket, in competition or otherwise, was Kuba Mikurda’s Escape to the Silver Globe, a documentary about the making of Andrzej Zulawski’s 1988 cult classic On the Silver Globe. The film features fresh interviews with crew members and archival footage of Zulawski discussing the history of his biggest undertaking. Famously shut down by the Polish Ministry of Culture in 1978, Zulawski’s film was eventually completed a decade later. Some of the things we learn are scandalous, and Mikurda includes footage from the set and from the completed film. On the Silver Globe was also screened after the documentary. Surprisingly, there weren’t any 40th anniversary screenings of Possession, Zulawski’s most famous film.

The opening gala culminated with a screening of Andrzej Munk’s 1960 Polish classic Bad Luck, and the awards ceremony climaxed with a major Golden Lions-winning surprise that had been rumored might occur yet seemed a bit improbable. Throughout the festival, the buzz was that Leave No Traces would be the obvious Golden Lions winner due to its high profile, with the Warsaw-based hip-hopera Other People flagged as a potential spoiler. I was inclined to agree after seeing the film, but both the buzz and my prognostication proved wrong.

Leave No Traces
A scene from Jan P. Matuszynski’s Leave No Traces. © Łukasz Bąk

I chose Back Then as my first screening because it was directed by Kinga Dębska, who helmed my favorite film at the 2015 edition of the festival, These Daughters of Mine, and co-stars Kinga Preis, the cabaret owner from another of my 2015 faves, Agnieszka Smoczynska’s The Lure. Preis’s Elzbieta is one-half of a frazzled married couple surviving Poland in the 1980s. Her husband, Talek (a very funny Adam Woronowicz, one of the stars of the upcoming Polish version of The Office), often frustrates her to no end, as does the politics of her brother.

Advertisement

The story centers around one of their daughters, Marta (Barbara Papis), and is full of a bittersweet nostalgia for Poles who grew up in that era. Based on the laughter I heard and the reports of people who were around in the ’80s, the film’s details are spot-on. Dębska also has a flair for supplementing the sweetly sentimental with a tart, biting edge coated with dark humor. Here, it’s as if Marta is reminiscing about her childhood by first interpreting it through innocent eyes before then layering an adult’s knowledge as a corrective on top of the memory.

The ’80s haunted this year’s festival. Hell, the decade even haunted my hotel room, because one of the few things that I could understand on my TV was the MTV ’80s video channel. At least six films in competition took place in the ’80s, including Mateusz Rakowicz’s riotously entertaining action comedy The Getaway King. The Najmro in the film’s Polish title is real-life thief and communist-era hero Zdzislaw Najmrodzki (Dawid Ogrodnik), who steals from Pewex stores and, during his tenure in crime, escaped the cops 29 times.

The police don’t like looking foolish, so Barski (Robert Wieckiewicz) is determined to bring Najmro down. The film electrically focuses on how our hero and villain are caught up in a cat-and-mouse game, which is complicated by the introduction of Gabi (Olga Boladz), the one woman who may convince Najmro to go straight. As time passes, and the Berlin Wall falls, the film darkens without losing its spry, comic tone. Even when employing familiar action tropes like slow motion, The Getaway King never relinquishes its giddy hold on the viewer. That’s primarily due to the excellent work by the actors and a nonstop pace. Oddly enough, the film’s sole award wasn’t for its sound or editing but for its costume design, though there’s a batshit disco number here that begins with Najmro flipping open his jacket in slow motion while confetti and glitter cover the screen that certainly makes a case for that prize.

Advertisement

I expected Back Then and The Getaway King to compete for the festival’s audience award, and the latter had the longest sustained applause of any film that I attended, but the jury went with Sonata, an impressive, moving biopic about Polish pianist Grzegorz Płonka (an astonishing Michael Sikorski, a deserving winner of the professional acting debut prize). Hailing from Murzasichle in the Tatra Mountains, Plonka was originally diagnosed as autistic. However, an astute teacher notices that he may actually be deaf. He may also have hidden musical talent. After undergoing implant surgery, Grzegorz dreams of going to music school and playing with the symphony. To writer-director Bartosz Blaschke’s credit, Sonata avoids the easily manipulative traps of most biopics. The agony, heartbreak, and pain of the film’s characters seethe with rawness, which makes their ultimate triumphs so effective.

Fears
A scene from Łukasz Ronduda and Łukasz Gutt’s Fears. © Serce

I didn’t share the festival’s affection for Mosquito State, which won the Golden Claw for Vision Apart, or Other People, a film based on an epic poem by Dorota Masłowska. Debut director award winner Aleksandra Terpińska adapts it as a rap-fueled ride through the miserable lives of several Warsaw denizens, led by best actor winner Jacek Beler. The stories are extremely familiar and clichéd, so what makes this work for the Polish audiences isn’t only its accuracy about the way Warsaw feels, but the flow and meter of the rap poetry. But it’s completely lost in the subtitles, and the result for this hip-hop fan was a cacophonous monotony.

Advertisement

No doubt bound for U.S. distribution, Jan P. Matuszynski’s Leave No Traces is a sprawling epic about the real-life police murder of Grzegorz Przemyk (Mateusz Górski), son of Solidarity activist Barbara Sadowska (Sandra Korzeniak). The film is full of complicated characters whose imperfections are used against them by a corrupt system. Przemyk is picked up by the police for not having his I.D. and is subsequently beaten to death in the police station, with his friend, Jurek (Tomasz Zietek), as the sole witness. Matuszyński and cinematographer Kacper Fertacz obscure most of the interminable beating, which somehow only makes the moment feel so much worse. Matuszyński keeps the viewer in a constant state of unease for the entire runtime as we slowly discover how insurmountable the odds for justice are.

Rather than prosecute the men responsible, the state doubles and triples down, refusing to acknowledge any wrongdoing. They’d rather destroy the reputation of the victims. Sound familiar? The excellent, character-driven script by Kaja Krawczyk-Wnuk shows how this tact ultimately backfires. Przemyck’s murder would have been off the front pages and forgotten had justice been served. Instead, it galvanized the movement the state wanted to suppress. We learn that up to 60,000 people attended his memorial. As an aside, it’s easy to imagine Leave No Traces competing for the International Film Oscar because the Academy loves films that allows its members to pat themselves on the backs and say, “See, it’s worse in other countries,” when in reality it’s exactly the same thing that happens here. In Gdynia, it took home the production design award, but not the Golden Lions. It won the Silver Lions instead.

Films with LGBTQ themes also competed for the Golden Lions. In addition to Fears, there was Piotr Domalewski’s Operation Hyacinth, whose title refers to an ’80s-era police crackdown on homosexuals. Officer Robert (Tomasz Zietek) goes undercover to find a serial killer of gay men. As he visits the same gay hotspots that he once raided without mercy, he gains the trust of Arek (Hubert Milkowski), who may hold the key to cracking the case. In the process, Robert is forced to reckon with his latent homosexual desires and relationships with his fiancée and homophobic father. He also endangers himself as his investigation threatens to expose some powerful enemies. Screenwriter Marcin Ciaston, who took home the screenwriting award, weaves a complex web of anger, suspense, and romance, and Domalewski brings a neo-noir feel to the film that oozes an appropriate level of nihilism.

Advertisement

On the night before the awards ceremony, there’s always a “leak” about the Golden Lions winner. If you’re in the right place at the right time, you will hear it. The leak was that Fears was the jury’s choice. Then I started hearing that it was Leave No Traces. And then, the Fears leaks started to outnumber any other rumors. Full disclosure requires me to reveal that I know one of the writers of Fears, Slant contributor Michał Oleszczyk, who co-wrote it with Łukasz Ronduda and Katarzyna Sarnowska. Imagine how excited I was when the leak turned out to be true. The enthusiastic response from the award show audience echoed their agreement.

In Fears, Dawid Ogrodnik plays real-life artist and LGBTQ activist Daniel Rycharski. Daniel is devoutly Catholic, so when a lesbian friend commits suicide after being constantly attacked by homophobes in their small-town community, he wants to organize a Way of the Cross for her. This is met with much opposition by the Catholic Church and the community. What sets Fears apart, and what makes it so compelling, is its strong religious undercurrent, as well as presence, and the way that the filmmakers capitalize on how Daniel is both gay and an observant Catholic (the young man is also in a relationship with a closeted neighbor). I cannot say that I fully understood the specific ceremony that Daniel wishes to enact (I was raised Baptist), but it will be clear to all that its ultimate goal is to show that one can be devout without being untrue to oneself, and how deeply that complicates matters.

The Polish Film Festival ran from September 20—25.

Odie Henderson

Odie Henderson's work has also appeared in The Village Voice, Vulture, Cineaste Magazine, MovieMezzanine, Salon, and RogerEbert.com.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.