Polish Shorts (2010)

01) TWIST AND BLOOD: An eleven-year-old known as Bellyboy is a laughing stock among his peers. His parents want to change him at all costs, get him to lose weight. Bellyboy has his own way of relieving his negative emotions, but it's a secret. With time he'll give it away to a friend he fancies...
02) THE GALLERY: A black and white line, with only a few accents within a bright red stain, forms a satirical parable on the consumer habits of modern society. Today, a real man and a real woman find the true meaning of life in a shopping mall. Their shopping spree is sparked by the sheer volume of mass-produced goods. Laden like ants with these goods they return to their super-car and get back to their super-anthill. But did not they lose something on the way in this chaos?
03) THE END OF THE WORLD: A small, almost desolate village. It makes no sense to look for young people here – since there are no prospects for them, they left to look for jobs – to the city or abroad. Only the elderly remained. Their everyday lives are marked by routine, repeatable activities. As they say, many depends on a season – it’s better in summer, in winter every day is a struggle for survival. The only entertainment and a window onto the world is a mobile bakery which stops in the village every day.
04) MASKA: This trip into the quaint microcosm Brothers Quay is yet another foray into the world of Polish literature. After the Street of Crocodiles (inspired by Bruno Schulz's prose) and Inventorium of Traces (a tribute to Jan Potocki), the time is ripe for the allegorical science fiction of Stanislaw Lem. In Maska the masters of puppet animation create a world suspended between the future and the past, full of weathered props and a sultry carnality. We meet the demonic female robot, Duenna, who has to annihilate the rebel threatening the royal throne. However, the seemingly simple plot generates a number of disturbing reflections circulating around the themes of love, identity and power. The film was made in Se-ma-for studio in Łódź, and is accompanied by the composition „De Natura sonoris I” by Krzysztof Penderecki.
05) THE WHISPER: A cottage somewhere in the mountainous wilderness and props perhaps taken from a horror movie: a creaking old mill, a spider enclosed inside glass, dark-violet nail polish, and a blunt knife... A bored couple on holiday give shelter to a dri..ing young couple who appear on the doorstep of their house. They all go gathering berries in the forest and they all play games by the fire. The spontaneous young guests begin to wreak havoc on the predictable life of the couple yet are not hurry to return to their journey. What really happened in that cottage house? What emotions were evoked by the mysterious strangers?
06) A PIECE OF SUMMER: The end of summer, the end of holidays. A boy visits his grandfather who lives and works in the mountainous forests. Surrounded by wild nature and severe world they try to rebuild their bonds.
07) TALK TO HIM: The moment we get up in the morning, our life becomes a combination of letters and numbers. They are everywhere: at home, on the street and at work, in newspapers, in computers, on billboards. It is just these seemingly harmless signs that organize, and also control our everyday lives. Subordinated by the dictatorship of information we imperceptibly begin to lose our own selves. Only in a close contact with other people we have the chance to break free from their intrusive presence. The film made at the Fine Arts Academy in Poznań combines hand-drawn animation with documentary photography.
08) RETURNS: From the mist there emerges the runway of Warsaw airport. The guard of honour of the Polish Army is waiting to solemnly welcome those who have just arrived in Poland. But there is no one to welcome this time. On their shoulders the soldiers carry invisible coffins in front of invisible spectators and carefully place them on special racks - all to the rhythm of Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’. We observe all the intricate choreography, which turns out to be a rehearsal for the ceremony. This short black-and-white film is a record of events that took place after 10 April 2010, one of the most important dates in modern Polish history. On that day, 96 people, including the Polish president and government representatives died in a plane crash near Smolensk. They were on their way to Russia to participate in a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, the mass murder of Polish officers carried out by the NKVD.
09) MILLHAVEN: Teenage Loretta is aware of the fact that everything leads to death. Will she be able to do a "dance" of life? For the first time, untold story about the heroine of a dark ballad written by Nick Cave and boldly interpreted by Katarzyna Groniec - "polish Edith Piaf".
10) SING ME TO SLEEP: A picturesque village surrounded by fjords near Bergen, Norway. Robert, a 40-year-old postal worker, gives up work to spend time by the bed of his mother diagnosed with terminal cancer. She has only one wish before dying: she wants to know that her only son is not alone in the world. The man lies to please her ensuring that he is already dating a girl. The film is an adaptation of a short story by a renowned Norwegian writer Frode Grytten.
11) INTERROGATION: ‘Interrogation’ is a very moving story about a soldier of Armia Krajowa (Polish Home Army) convicted during the Stalinist regime in Poland. He is reminiscing maltreatment, never-ending tortures and humiliation that he has suffered from the Polish secret police. Extraordinary in its form, the film deals with subjects of the cruelty of totalitarian system and incredible will of life that tries to oppose it.
12) HEROIC PARROT WITH THE DOG: Warsaw’s Praga district enjoys a bad reputation, but in recent times it has also become a fashionable place to live. As a result, the former character of the place is slowly falling into oblivion. It has been four years now that the local primary school kids have taken part in an experimental educational film project – New Urban Legends. The children from the poorest regions in Poland make up stories related to their neighbourhood, and then collaborate in writing scripts and creating movies based on these stories. This time the young residents of Praga talk about the brave parrot, which saved two children from a fire on Brzeska street. Since then, its image has become a hallmark of the fire service.