THE CONVERSATION

POLISH TITLE: ROZMOWA

REPRESENTED BY KFF

Agnieszka and Janusz are serving long-term sentences in Polish prisons, both having committed heinous crimes. She is a young girl ; he a middle-aged man serving life imprisonment. They got to know each other many years earlier, through correspondence, but “The Conversation” depicts their first virtual meeting face-to-face, during Agnieszka’s first leave from jail. Throughout their sincere and startling Skype conversation, entirely filmed in split-screen, the young girl confides in the elderly man, as during therapy or in a confessional. Her story is far from catholic, though, and her attentive listener seems to be everything but pious. Through a series of intriguing sequences describing Agnieszka’s brief visit to her home during the leave – in quest for her past, her identity and motives – an unsettling story unfolds. The eternal story of Good and Evil, reflecting Raskolnikov’s theories in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and punishment”. The audience is left with a number of harassing existential questions : To what extent is society to blame? Are there such things as innocence and intentional cruelty ? What does it take to make an individual cross the moral borderline? The director, Piotr Sulkowski, discreetly present behind the camera all along the film, thoroughly refrains from giving any hint or clue. His documentary acts a razor-sharp reminder of the harsh human condition, uniting victims and their executioners.


FILM REPRESENTED BY KRAKOW FILM FOUNDATION

GENRE:
documentary
COUNTRY:
Poland
RUNNING TIME:
16'
YEAR:
DIRECTING:
Piotr Sułkowski
SCRIPT:
Piotr Sułkowski
DOP:
Michał Gruszczyński
EDITOR:
Piotr Sułkowski, Joanna Więckowska
PRODUCTION:
PWSFTviT (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Filmowa, Telewizyjna i Teatralna)

Piotr Sułkowski »

Graduate Film Direction at the Lodz Film School  & Ethnology at the University of Warsaw.

A grant holder of the Young Poland - programme of National Centre for Culture 2015. Prize winner of Award of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage for outstanding accomplishments for students of artistic schools 2013. His movies have been shown at over 200 festivals around the world.


https://vimeo.com/340181275

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