International Premiere
A period of rapid modernization in Poland in the 1990s brought with it anxiety and fears inflicted by hegemonic order and a complete disregard for the social costs or traumatic after-effects.
Poland
2022
In Polish with English subtitles
Featured in:
MODES 1
Visions of dark impulses are given the spotlight and invite an opportunity to reflect on the personal in relation to the political. From Congo to China, and the Philippines to Poland, the end is nigh.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Yunan
In this haunting mood piece, Munir is a middle-aged Syrian writer in exile in Germany. In crisis, he takes himself up to one of the Halligan islands in the North Sea, a suitable place to end it all...
The Secret Agent
Having run afoul of an influential bureaucrat in Brazil’s military dictatorship circa 1977, Marcelo decamps to Recife to live under an assumed name — but he’ll soon come to understand precisely how rampant the country’s corruption has become.
The Mother and the Bear
Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.
The Track
In the middle of a mountain forest above Sarajevo, three boys train for the Olympics in a bullet-ridden luge track abandoned since the 1984 Winter Games. An ambitious, hopeful look at the next generation striving to overcome the sins of their fathers.
Breaking the Waves
Kicking off our 2026 Pantheon series of the greatest films ever made, Lars von Trier's 1996 masterpiece is a devastating melodrama featuring an indelible performance from Emily Watson as the woman whose love for her husband knows no bounds.
Credits
Producer
Dominik Ritszel
ANIM
Dominik Ritszel
Editor
Dominik Ritszel
Director
Dominik Ritszel
Dominik Ritszel lives in Katowice, Poland, and works with film, video installations, and objects. He holds a doctoral degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. He was the recipient of the Young European Artist Trieste Contemporanea Award 2015 and his film The Earth Will Swallow it All (2021) won the Polish Experimental Film Competition category at the Short Waves Festival.