IV
Student Anka (Adrianna Biedrzyńska) enjoys a good relationship with her father Michał (Janusz Gajos), with whom she lives. When Michał goes abroad on a business trip, Anka finds an envelope with the words “Open after my death.” written by her father. This sets off a chain of events leading to confused – and perhaps taboo – feelings between the two.
V
Jacek (Mirosław Baka), a country boy living in Warsaw, drifts around the city, trying to entertain himself. Eventually, he comes across taxi driver Waldemar (Jan Tesarz), whom he brutally kills. It is up to young lawyer Piotr (Krzysztof Globisz) to defend Jacek in court against a murder charge that could entail the death penalty. This episode was expanded into the feature-length film A Short Film About Killing.
Dekalog has achieved that rare feat of being a foreign-language feature that is internationally popular, not only with film critics, but also with the viewing public. How exactly did this 10-part cycle, originally made for television in communist Poland and loosely based around the Ten Commandments, find such success? The answer lies in Krzysztof Kieślowski’s ability to transplant broader moral dilemmas into the everyday lives of its characters, to dramatise rather than dictate reality, to find the universal resonance in seemingly local issues – and to do all of this with a strikingly mature aesthetic, hitherto unseen on most television sets.
Films will be available via ICA Cinema 3 between 18 May - 25 May.
