Your ticket to Poland

FROM THE WEIGHT of history to contemporary dramas, six recent examples of Poland’s celebrated cinema will be shown in the Polish Film Festival opening on Sunday at SF World Cinema in Bangkok.

Organised by the Polish Filmmakers Association, the Polish Film Institute and the Embassy of Poland, the festival’s programme paints a wide spectrum of Polish society, showing the remnants of the past, the urgency of the present and a vibrant transformation of the country.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Polish Film Institute, an agency that has tirelessly promoted the wealth of Polish cinema. Poland has a long history of filmmaking – enhanced by its cultural wealth in literature and music – and produced some of the world’s finest directors such as Krzysztof Kieslowski, Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski.

In the Polish Film Festival, viewers will have an opportunity to see works by a new generation of filmmakers, as well as the latest film by one of Poland’s most celebrated directors, Andrzej Wajda. In “Walesa: Man of Hope”, Wajda tells the story of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Solidarity Movement, recounting the historic labour-led revolution in the 1970s.

Another gem in the festival is “Ida”, a startling and poignant drama by Pawel Pawlikowski. Shot in luminous black-and-white, “Ida” follows a young woman in the 1960s as she’s about to take her vow to become a Catholic nun. When she travels home to see the last surviving member of her family, she discovers a dark secret involving World War II, the Nazis and the moral cost that Poland and its people have had to pay. It’s Poland’s submission for the Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film.

On a lighter note, there’s “One Way Ticket to the Moon”, a road comedy set in 1969 about Adam, a young man who’s about to be drafted into the submarine unit of the Navy. Adam’s elder brother, Antoni, decides to take him on a trip across the country to meet friends and relatives – and for the young man to lose his virginity before he embarks on harsh life in the military.

Family affairs are at the heart of “Fanciful”, a drama about a 15-year-old girl’s emotional rite of passage. After the death of her mother, the girl falls ill with a strange disease, and her previously distant father enters her life and tries to re-establish a connection. Meanwhile, the girl’s fight against illness presents a tough test for the family.

A current box-office hit in Poland, “Gods” is the story of medical heroism, focusing on the life and career of Dr Zbigniew Religa. A brash, pioneering cardiac surgeon, Religa successfully led a team of doctors in Poland’s first human heart transplant.

In another medical and human drama, “Life Feels Good” tells the story of a boy with cerebral palsy. His personal suffering is backgrounded by the transformative period of Poland in the 1980s and 1990s, with socialism crumbling and giving way to democracy.

 

 

POLE POSITION

>>The Polish Film Festival runs from Sunday until Thursday SF World Cinema at CentralWorld. All films have English and Thai subtitles. Tickets are Bt120.

>>Sunday: “Ida”, 6pm, with Q&A by producer Ewa Puszyzynska; “Walesa: Man of Hope”, 8pm

>>Monday: “One Way Ticket to the Moon”, 7pm, with Q&A by director Jacek Bromski; “Fanciful”, 9pm

>>Tuesday: “Life Feels Good”, 7pm; “Walesa: Man of Hope”, 9pm

>>Wednesday: “Gods”, 7pm, with Q&A by director Lukasz Palkowski; “Ida”, 9pm

>>Thursday: “Fanciful”, 7pm, with Q&A by producer Eryk Sepniewski; “One Way Ticket to the Moon”, 9pm

>>For more details, check SFCinemaCity.com.