11-year-old Paweł (Wojciech Klata) is brought up by his technology-minded father Krzysztof (Henryk Baranowski) and religious aunt Irena (Maja Komorowska). After gifting Paweł a pair of ice skates, Krzysztof places all his faith in a computer programme that calculates whether his son can safely skate across a frozen lake.
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 How exactly did this 10-part cycle, originally made for television in communist Poland and loosely based around the Ten Commandments, find such success?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.
Film will be available via ICA Cinema 3 between 14 May - 21 May.
