There’s an icy, unforgiving clarity and compositional rigour to this arresting feature debut from Polish film-maker Damian Kocur, made using non-professionals and partly inspired by a violent incident from real life; it won the special jury prize at Venice in 2022.
Real-life Polish pianist Tymoteusz Bies plays Tymek, a high-achieving young man studying piano at Warsaw’s Chopin University of Music. He’s returned for the summer break to his drab home town, perhaps based on Ełk in the north-east, where all the kids he grew up with are heading for useless jobs and humdrum lives. He’s happy to be back with his music teacher mum and his brother Jacek (played by his actual brother Jacek Bies) but is perplexed and irritated by the fact that Jacek, despite his own piano talent, isn’t really working hard to get a musical scholarship, like him.
