Mr. Jones

Now, if you’d think that a film about the reporter who broke the story about the Holodomor would be about the Holodomor, and not about the reporter, then you’d make the same mistake I did going into this film. It’s called Mr. Jones for a reason, and that’s because it’s about Mr. Jones. To which…

The Amateurs

The Amateurs is about a theatre troupe of actors with learning disabilities who get the chance to perform on a professional stage. The theatre director is none too keen, and insists professional, able-bodied actors must be part of the production. He then further ham-strings them by insisting that it must be a Shakespearean performance. Like,…

Rust

Rust is a short documentary profiling the work of sculptor Mariola Wawrzusiak-Borcz. She uses scrap metal to create sculptures of animals, insects and the natural world. Mariola is driven by a love of nature. She loves to go out camping, exploring the wilderness with her dogs. In recycling metal waste into art, there is an…

I Burn Easily

I Burn Easily is a feminist revenge story, told in 5 episodes that form a short film. It is about 3 friends who take a body positive topless selfie, only to have it be appropriated by a misogynistic website that displays it for online hate and pornography. The friends then decide how to handle to…

Broken Head

Broken Head is a documentary which follows Andrzej, a prison inmate, who, coming off the back of a suicide attempt, decides to pursue therapy. We’re gonna put a pin in the ethics of that, and come back to it later. Andrzej has spent his life in and out of prison, addicted to various drugs, mostly…

Love

Love is a short film about a guy, Pawel, who gets in debt to gangsters, who threaten to kill his family if he doesn’t participate in a robbery. When someone is killed during the course of the crime, Pawel ends up sentenced to decades in prison. The one highlight is he and his lawyer have…

The Ghost of the Baltic Sea

The Ghost of the Baltic Sea is a documentary on discarded fishing nets made by the WWF. Firstly, I’m not gonna get into anything about the nets until I say this, just coz it’s a WWF documentary, does that mean you need your logo in every fucking shot? The entire film is about a WWF…

The Prince and the Dybbuk

The Prince and the Dybbuk is more interesting in its first 15 minutes than some films manage to be in 2 hours. It is a biopic of early Hollywood director Michal Waszynski. He worked on blockbusters like Fall of the Roman Empire, The Barefoot Contessa, and Orson Welles’s Othello. When Michal died, he was buried…

Under The Sky

An elderly Polish man feels the ebbing of memory in Under The Sky, but two things remain, his love of his wife and his love of flying. A retired fighter pilot, he still stares out the window as planes pass across the sky. He still remembers the aircraft he flew and how to get prepped…

The Unicorn

The Unicorn is a short film profiling Kim Lee, a Vietnamese-Polish drag queen. Kim reflects on why she got into drag, what she gets out of it, and what it means to her. She also compares Vietnamese and Polish attitudes towards gender and sexuality, and facing homophobia in Poland. For Kim, drag is a performance…