ADWOKAT W ROLI GLOWNEJ (ADVOCATE IN THE LEADING ROLE)
ADVOCATE (2019)
Watchable. Less than 100% comprehensible. I guess some notions are salient among Israelis but not outsiders. The documentary's informative: each Palestinian family has had at least one person imprisoned by the Israelis and, at the pretext of protection, inmates are subjected to traceless torture, like sleep deprivation and blasting music. It's disheartening such human rights violations go unpunished. As a civil rights organization member says, he doesn't believe in justice. Hard to disagree.
MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1947)
Watchable. An engaging old, black and white, film from the times when vulgar language or obscenity had no place on the screen. The story's clear-cut, with very little aggression, even verbal. It's fairy-tale-like naive even with no magic. The child and adult female protagonists are head-strong. Apart from the tear-jerking background of people disillusioned by life, the tale is humorous, e.g. the judge and the witnesses imagining the consequences of their statements or the scene of the droves of mail workers bringing in sacks of letters.
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER (1993)
Recommended. Shocking and devastating. Ruins your image of the Brits being gentle people. Evokes strong emotions and nails you down to your seat when you see how a group of accidental Irish folk serves 15 years for a terror bomb attack they did not commit. And the police never got sentenced for scapegoating them.
This year's event was impeccably organized, to the minute and with quality and varied pictures.
IKAR. LEGENDA MIETKA KOSZA (ICARUS. THE LEGEND OF MIETEK KOSZ)
Recommended. Music comes first, then his incomprehensible behaviour, last you find out he's blind. Phenomenal. Pulls all the right strings. The score is light jazz/classical with the jazz perfectly bearable even to me. The story has quite a lot of humour, e.g. "There's a brunette." "I want a blonde." "What does it matter brunette or blonde if you're blind?!" but also frightening or touching at times. As common in Polish films, the action goes to and fro in time but captions explain what takes place when. The story's so versatile, it should have become an Oscar candidate instead of "Boże ciało" ("Corpus Christi").
WARSAW FILM FESTIVAL
I only went to the meeting with Lidia Duda who talked a little about the differences between a reportage and a documentary but mostly about what is true and what is false in the documentary genre. The recap of the rules was interesting but didn't really bring in any novelty. As for the truth v. forgery, when people are provoked or substituted by actors without a commentary that this is happening, I personally consider it a forgery. The director does not.
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