The Culture Commission of the Jagiellonian University’s PhD Student Association invites you to choose which film we will watch during the next edition of the Doctoral Students’ Film Club, which will take place on Thursday November 10th. You can vote up through Sunday October 23rdusing the following link:
This time, you can vote for the following films:
Eagle: The Last Patrol, dir. Jacek Bławut, Poland, 2022
The year is 1940. During the feverish evacuation of Allied soldiers at Dunkirk, the Polish submarine ORP Orzeł (“Eagle”) embarks on a dangerous mission in the North Sea. The Eagle faces threats such as underwater mines, aerial bombings, and enemy ships. The crew must deal with increasing physical and psychological exhaustion. However, the real enemy is invisible, hidden in the ship’s claustrophobic interior.
Eagle was written and directed by Jacek Bławut, a documentary filmmaker who has received many awards, including the “Eagle” Polish Film Award and the Silver Lions at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. “I had no doubt that I wanted to work under conditions that were as realistic as possible. On the set of my documentaries, when I enter my protagonists’ homes, everything breathes the truth. I wanted the same to happen on the set of Eagle. I wanted to see everything that the crew saw right in front of me,” he explains. The film’s set design has been unprecedented in Polish film history; a submarine has been faithfully recreated. Historians, engineers, officers, and sailors who served on a similar ship participated in its creation.
The director has collaborated with Jolanta Dylewska, one of the most renowned and experienced Polish cinematographers who has worked on such projects as Spoor and In Darkness (both directed by Agnieszka Holland), for which she has received multiple awards, including the Award for Best Cinematography at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia and the “Eagle” Polish Film Award.
The film’s cast consists of more than thirty actors, including Tomasz Ziętek, Mateusz Kościukiewicz, Rafał Zawierucha, Adama Woronowicz, Antoni Pawlicki, Tomasza Schuchardt, and Filip Pławiak. In the film, the have created a crew of colorful individuals who function as a single organism in complete symbiosis with the ship.
Eagle: The Last Patrol is a poetic war film of great artistic value made with panache unprecedented in Polish cinema. This project was a major technological undertaking and was supported by Poland’s Ministry of National Defense as well as units of the 3rdShip Flotilla and 8th Coastal Defense Flotilla. In Polish.
EO, dir. Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland, 2022
This visionary film by European cinema veteran Jerzy Skolimowski made a sensational splash at last year's Cannes Festival, where it deservedly won the Jury Prize. The director of Barrier, The Shout and Essential Killing references Robert Bresson’s legendary film Au Hasard Balthazar with a donkey as the protagonist. We watch the epic journey of the eponymous EO, who comes under the care of the wise and the stupid, the good and the brutal, as well as empathetic and vain people. Skolimowski creates a simple though visually stunning universal parable about the condition of contemporary society, and about the imbalance between the worlds of man and animal. It is also a wonderfully poetic film about the need for freedom and about incapacitation. The Polish master filmmaker is unafraid to experiment; Michał Dymek's camera performs extraordinary acrobatics – resulting in a mesmerizingly fresh work that seems directed by a young artist leveraging the possibilities of contemporary cinema. That's Skolimowski – eternally New Wave, a searcher full of bravado and confidence. We're lucky to have him.
Johnny, dir. Daniel Jaroszek, Poland, 2022
Based on a true story, Johnny is an inspiring and moving film told from the perspective of Patryk Galewski, a charge of Father Jan Kaczkowski.
Patryk breaks into a house in a small town. A court sentences him to do community service in a hospice in Puck, where he meets the unique Father Jan Kaczkowski. This priest engages young men from vocational schools, on the surface tough rebels, to help the terminally ill. In his work, he focuses on closeness, tenderness, and the struggle to build a relationship with the other person. He teaches his charges empathy with a large dose of humor, which brings him great popularity. Not long after, Jan himself becomes a patient in his own hospice. Patryk is left in a situation that will change his life.