{mosimage}The executive producer of the film is NORDFILM (www.nordfilm.pl), a Polish company based in Gdynia, in co-production with BOB-ROLLO (www.bobrollo.com.pl) Marian Bobrucki, Henryk Bobrucki and the National Culture Center (www.nck.pl). The producer told FNE that the budget was 7.4 million PLN (EUR 1.8 million) with 1 million PLN from Bob-Rollo and 300,000 PLN from the National Culture Center. The production received 4 million in financing from the Polish Film Institute (www.pisf.pl), 307,000 PLN from the Gdynia Film Fund (www.centrumkulturygdynia.org) and 400,000 from Bank Zachodni WBK (www.bzwbk.pl), the film's official sponsor.
{mosimage}"When Mirosław Pepka, the co-author of the script, called me with the proposition to make this movie I didn't hesitate for a moment. I just knew that I had to do it, because it is a way of fulfilling a certain obligation towards the people who died and those who survived and live to this day with a major trauma. One of the heroes of our film is Wiesław Kasprzycki, who was 17 years old in December of 1970. He was captured on the street, taken to the presidium of the Municipal National Council in Gdynia and brutally beaten. He was practically dying when he was freed. After weeks of recovery a doctors' commission stated that he had lost 85% of his health. Before we started shooting in the fall of 2009 I tried to convince him to talk about it in front of the camera, but he couldn't. He had a nervous breakdown. This is still that much alive for these people," Krauze explains when asked for his reasons for making the film.
{mosimage}The film was shot between February and March 2010 on the authentic locations in Gdynia. The set design crew headed by Zbigniew Dalecki had to reconstruct communist Poland from the 1970's to allow the filmmakers to create the most realistic image of the era. "Our main principle was to avoid falsity. Everything had to be natural. There couldn't be any artistic creation or expression that would draw the viewer in any different direction. We tried hard for everything to be presented in a 1 to 1 scale. We truly didn't want to shock, but when we started o create the set that had to be 'touched' with this blood, dropping down the stairs, it turned out that the reality was very brutal," said the cinematographer Jacek Petrycki.
Krauze is an accomplished Polish director and screenwriter. Born in 1940 in Warsaw, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and graduated from the Film School in Łódź. Throughout his career he worked both on feature and documentary films. His debut Finger Of God (1973) received the Andrzej Munk Award. He has been involved with TOR Studio, one of the oldest Polish production studios, since 1968. The Jury of San Remo Film Festival awarded him with the Special Award of the Jury for lifetime achievement.
The film entered Polish cinemas on 25 February 2010 distributed by Kino Świat (www.kinoswiat.pl) and was very well received by the audience and critics. with over 666,000 admissions. The screening at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia (www.fpff.pl) will be the first festival presentation of the title. The producer told FNE that the film will be distributed abroad.
Credits:
Director - Antoni Krauze
Screenwriter - Michał S. Pruski, Mirosław Piepka
Cinematography - Jacek Petrycki
Music - Michał Lorenc
Production Design - Zbigniew Dalecki
Sound - Mirosław Makowski, Michał Muzyka, Kacper Habisiak, Marcin Kasiński
Editing - Rafał Listopad
Costumes - Anna Grabowska
Production Manager - Olga Bieniek
Production - NORDFILM, Agencja SET
Producers - Kazimierz Beer, Mirosław Piepka
Co-Production - BOB-ROLLO Marian Bobrucki, Henryk Bobrucki, NCK
Executive Producer - NORDFILM Kazimierz Beer
Distributtion - Kino Świat
World Sales - Kino Świat
Cast:
Michał Kowalski
Marta Honzatko
Cezary Rybiński
Marta Kalmus-Jankowska
Production information:
NORDFILM
ul. Szyprów 16
81-561 Gdynia, Poland
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.nordfilm.pl
