Genre: Drama
Actor: Łukasz Simlat, Aleksandra Konieczna, Anna Biernacik, Barbara Jonak, Barbara Kurzaj, Bartosz Bielenia, Eliza Rycembel, Jakub Sierenberg, Juliusz Chrząstowski, Leszek Lichota, Lidia Bogacz, Lidia Bogaczówna, Łukasz Simlat, Tomasz Ziętek, Tomasz Ziętek, Zdzisław Wardejn, Zdzisław Wardejn, Томаш Зитек
Director: Jan Komasa
Set between the years 1977 and 2005, this Polish drama goes through various stages in the life of the controversial surrealist-expressionist painter Zdzisław Beksiński. The extensive video archive left behind by the artist was used to craft an intimate portrait of three interdependent people: Beksiński himself, his suicidal and neurotic son, and his wife.
Beksiński is superbly played by veteran actor Andrzej Seweryn, known for his appearance in numerous Andrzej Wajda films. Even though the film focuses less on Zdzisław's painting career and more on his relationship with his family, it will definitely inspire you to dig deeper into both his tragic life and impressively dark body of work.
Genre: Drama
Actor: Agnieszka Michalska, Aleksandra Konieczna, Alicja Karluk, Andrzej Chyra, Andrzej Seweryn, Danuta Nagorna, Dawid Ogrodnik, Jakub Wróblewski, Magdalena Boczarska, Zofia Perczynska
Director: Jan P. Matuszynski
Operating in a similar style and speed as the Safdie Brothers’ Good Time and Uncut Gems, Freestyle gives us a peek into the seedy underbelly of Poland through the eyes of Diego, a smalltime muscian who slides back into his drug dealing ways when he finds himself short on money. On the sensory front, Freestyle is a thrilling experience. Diego charges the film with palpable anxiety, Kraków’s underground community lights it up in dizzying neon, and the local hip-hop scene backs it with exciting new sounds. It’s a technical feat, but stripped of these elements, Freestyle is nothing more than a predictable crime thriller populated with predictable characters, many of whom, by the way, are thrown in at random points in the movie so that it often gets confusing and infuriating to watch. Despite potentially having something to say about the apathy of youth or the glaring discrepancy between social classes, Freestyle seems solely interested in being a slick crime thriller that has its characters run around in circles to save themselves. It looks good and sounds even better, but without anything substantial holding it up, Freestyle fails to relay an authentic sense of relevance and urgency.
Genre: Action, Adventure, Crime, Drama, Thriller
Actor: Artur Krajewski, Filip Lipiecki, Hana Nobis, Juliusz Chrząstowski, Krzysztof Zarzecki, Maciej Musiałowski, Michał Balicki, Michał Sikorski, Nel Kaczmarek, Olek Krupa, Patrik Vrbovský, Roman Gancarczyk, Zofia Kowalewska
Director: Maciej Bochniak
It starts out easy and compelling enough, in the middle of a crime scene with a naked dead girl on the shore. But easy and compelling this refuses to be. The film seems to be a slow, painful look at the process of capturing a perpetrator, a detective’s effort to profile a killer. But it threw a lot more at the wall hoping a lot more would stick. The nonlinear storytelling spices up the action, but it just feels like the base story needed all the help it could get. If you do stick with the movie, you’ll see some gory details, some twists, and an unnecessarily complex story.
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Actor: Andrzej Konopka, Andrzej Zieliński, Jakub Gierszał, Jan Wieteska, Justyna Schneider, Maja Ostaszewska, Paweł Jusiński, Przemysław Bluszcz, Wojciech Zieliński, Zbigniew Stryj, Zofia Jastrzębska
Director: Adrian Panek