In Robert Hloz’s sci-fi feature debut “Restore Point,” second chances are big business.
In the year 2041, anyone who has an unnatural death has the right to be brought back to life, provided they’ve dutifully created a backup of their personality called a “restore point.”
Naturally, some object to the notion of artificially extending life ad infinitum, wherein the story begins to get complicated.
“I wanted to make a sci-fi film since I was a little kid,” Hloz says, “but I would never guess that it will happen to be my debut. I thought maybe third, fourth film.”
But, as the Czech director recalls, he found himself going through notes for film ideas from screenwriter Tomislav Cecka and one of them began to loom large.
“He came up with an idea for a very realistic sci-fi about our society in the near future, where people can be restored if something bad happens to them,...
In the year 2041, anyone who has an unnatural death has the right to be brought back to life, provided they’ve dutifully created a backup of their personality called a “restore point.”
Naturally, some object to the notion of artificially extending life ad infinitum, wherein the story begins to get complicated.
“I wanted to make a sci-fi film since I was a little kid,” Hloz says, “but I would never guess that it will happen to be my debut. I thought maybe third, fourth film.”
But, as the Czech director recalls, he found himself going through notes for film ideas from screenwriter Tomislav Cecka and one of them began to loom large.
“He came up with an idea for a very realistic sci-fi about our society in the near future, where people can be restored if something bad happens to them,...
- 7/3/2023
- by Will Tizard
- Variety Film + TV
When shooting wrapped last February on Poland’s Oscar entry Never Gonna Snow Again, its filmmakers and production team could never have predicted the bizarre physical and emotional journey that the indie title would undergo across the next 11 months as it was finished and then unveiled amidst a global pandemic.
The film, which played In Competition at the Venice Film Festival in September and was scheduled to premiere at Telluride before the event was cancelled, is hoping to get Poland another seat at the Oscar nomination table much like Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Jan Komasa’s Corpus Christi did in 2018 and 2019 respectively, even if this year’s seat will be a virtual one.
Born out of an idea from established Polish helmer Malgorzata Szumowska and cinematographer Michal Englert, who have worked together on films such as Berlin Silver Bear winner Mug and last year’s English-language title The Other Lamb,...
The film, which played In Competition at the Venice Film Festival in September and was scheduled to premiere at Telluride before the event was cancelled, is hoping to get Poland another seat at the Oscar nomination table much like Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Jan Komasa’s Corpus Christi did in 2018 and 2019 respectively, even if this year’s seat will be a virtual one.
Born out of an idea from established Polish helmer Malgorzata Szumowska and cinematographer Michal Englert, who have worked together on films such as Berlin Silver Bear winner Mug and last year’s English-language title The Other Lamb,...
- 2/1/2021
- by Diana Lodderhose
- Deadline Film + TV
Above: Quo Vadis, Aida?When the Bosnian war broke out in the early 1990s I was three years old. We lived a five-minute ride from a U.S. military base, in Northern Italy, one of Europe’s largest. Two memories survived from those days. One is a noise: the deafening roar of the F16 Fighting Falcons taking off in the dead of night to bomb Serbian targets in the Balkans—and the other is a picture, printed on the front page of a newspaper: a single loaf of bread hovering above dozens of Bosnian refugees. That picture came back to life again yesterday, rippling on to almost identical halfway through Jasmila Žbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida?, a devastating look at what was possibly the single most atrocious event in that war, and arguably the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War: the Srebrenica genocide.Between July 11-...
- 9/4/2020
- MUBI
In “The Other Lamb,” Raffey Cassidy plays a young woman whose first period coincides with the discovery of a miscarried lamb fetus. Such is the territory we’re in with Polish filmmaker Malgorzata Szumowska and screenwriter Catherine S. McMullen’s allegorical slice of folk horror, and boy are we in for it. Though hardly subtle in its metaphoric intent,
Cassidy stars as Selah, one of the “sisters” in the Flock, as its deemed by their overseer, the Shepherd (Michiel Huisman). While he certainly fits the bill of the Charismatic Cult Leader, he’s a bit more brooding as he smothers his acolytes with kindness. Almost all of them are brainwashed blondes he’s either plucked out of civilization, or bred in-house using his stable of wives, who’ve spiritually expired. Selah isn’t especially close to any of the other sisters, and it’s a testament to Cassidy’s gifts that,...
Cassidy stars as Selah, one of the “sisters” in the Flock, as its deemed by their overseer, the Shepherd (Michiel Huisman). While he certainly fits the bill of the Charismatic Cult Leader, he’s a bit more brooding as he smothers his acolytes with kindness. Almost all of them are brainwashed blondes he’s either plucked out of civilization, or bred in-house using his stable of wives, who’ve spiritually expired. Selah isn’t especially close to any of the other sisters, and it’s a testament to Cassidy’s gifts that,...
- 4/4/2020
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War dominated the Polish Eagles, Poland's biggest film honors, in Warsaw late Monday, picking up seven awards.
The black-and-white drama of a tortured romance played out across Europe's Cold War era's political fault lines, scooped up the awards for best film, best director (Pawlikowski), best script (Pawlikowski and Janusz Glowacki) and best cinematography (Lukasz Zal). The film also picked up the honors for best actress for Joanna Kulig, best editing (Jaroslaw Kaminski) and best sound (Maciej Pawlowski, Miroslaw Makowski).
For a film that was also shortlisted for an Oscar last month in the ...
The black-and-white drama of a tortured romance played out across Europe's Cold War era's political fault lines, scooped up the awards for best film, best director (Pawlikowski), best script (Pawlikowski and Janusz Glowacki) and best cinematography (Lukasz Zal). The film also picked up the honors for best actress for Joanna Kulig, best editing (Jaroslaw Kaminski) and best sound (Maciej Pawlowski, Miroslaw Makowski).
For a film that was also shortlisted for an Oscar last month in the ...
- 3/26/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War dominated the Polish Eagles, Poland's biggest film honors, in Warsaw late Monday, picking up seven awards.
The black-and-white drama of a tortured romance played out across Europe's Cold War era's political fault lines, scooped up the awards for best film, best director (Pawlikowski), best script (Pawlikowski and Janusz Glowacki) and best cinematography (Lukasz Zal). The film also picked up the honors for best actress for Joanna Kulig, best editing (Jaroslaw Kaminski) and best sound (Maciej Pawlowski, Miroslaw Makowski).
For a film that was also shortlisted for an Oscar last month in the ...
The black-and-white drama of a tortured romance played out across Europe's Cold War era's political fault lines, scooped up the awards for best film, best director (Pawlikowski), best script (Pawlikowski and Janusz Glowacki) and best cinematography (Lukasz Zal). The film also picked up the honors for best actress for Joanna Kulig, best editing (Jaroslaw Kaminski) and best sound (Maciej Pawlowski, Miroslaw Makowski).
For a film that was also shortlisted for an Oscar last month in the ...
- 3/26/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War” has been named the best European film of 2018 at the European Film Awards, which were handed out on Saturday in Seville, Spain.
The decade-spanning drama, which was inspired by the stormy relationship between Pawlikowski’s parents, also won awards for its director, screenplay, lead actress (Joanna Kulig) and editor.
Marcello Fonte won the best-actor award for “Dogman,” which also took awards for its costume design and hair and makeup.
Also Read: 'Cold War' Film Review: Romance in Postwar Europe Is Ravishing and Haunted
Armando Iannucci’s “The Death of Stalin” was named the best European comedy, while “Bergman – A Year in a Life” won for documentary, and “Another Day of Life” won for animated film.
Four of the Best European Film Award nominees — “Border,” “Cold War,” “Dogman” and “Girl” — are the foreign-language Oscar entries from Sweden, Poland, Italy and Belgium, respectively. The fifth,...
The decade-spanning drama, which was inspired by the stormy relationship between Pawlikowski’s parents, also won awards for its director, screenplay, lead actress (Joanna Kulig) and editor.
Marcello Fonte won the best-actor award for “Dogman,” which also took awards for its costume design and hair and makeup.
Also Read: 'Cold War' Film Review: Romance in Postwar Europe Is Ravishing and Haunted
Armando Iannucci’s “The Death of Stalin” was named the best European comedy, while “Bergman – A Year in a Life” won for documentary, and “Another Day of Life” won for animated film.
Four of the Best European Film Award nominees — “Border,” “Cold War,” “Dogman” and “Girl” — are the foreign-language Oscar entries from Sweden, Poland, Italy and Belgium, respectively. The fifth,...
- 12/15/2018
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
“Every week, we have received 5-8 letters from Oleg. He is involved in everything - in the cast, costumes, props, and set construction.”
Final preparations are now underway for the start of prinicpal photography on Numbers, the feature film based on the 2011 play of the same name by the imprisoned Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov. It will be directed by Ukrainian actor-director Akhtem Seitablaev on Sentsov’s recommendation.
Sentsov is in a remote Arctic prison camp in protest at his detention and that of some 70 compatriots in Russia. He was on hunger strike for 145 days, which ended in October.
He had...
Final preparations are now underway for the start of prinicpal photography on Numbers, the feature film based on the 2011 play of the same name by the imprisoned Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov. It will be directed by Ukrainian actor-director Akhtem Seitablaev on Sentsov’s recommendation.
Sentsov is in a remote Arctic prison camp in protest at his detention and that of some 70 compatriots in Russia. He was on hunger strike for 145 days, which ended in October.
He had...
- 12/12/2018
- by Martin Blaney
- ScreenDaily
Academy invitee Eddie Redmayne in 'The Theory of Everything.' Academy invites 322 new members: 'More diverse and inclusive list of filmmakers and artists than ever before' The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has offered membership to 322 individuals "who have distinguished themselves by their contributions to theatrical motion pictures." According to the Academy's press release, "those who accept the invitations will be the only additions to the Academy's membership in 2015." In case all 322 potential new members say an enthusiastic Yes, that means an injection of new blood representing about 5 percent of the Academy's current membership. In the words of Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs (as quoted in the press release), in 2015 "our branches have recognized a more diverse and inclusive list of filmmakers and artists than ever before, and we look forward to adding their creativity, ideas and experience to our organization." In recent years, the Academy membership has...
- 7/1/2015
- by Anna Robinson
- Alt Film Guide
Golden Globes are considering “Ida” directed and co-written by Pawel Pawlikowski (“Last Resort", “My Summer of Love"), a moving and intimate drama about a young novitiate nun in 1960's Poland who, on the verge of taking her vows, discovers a dark family secret dating from the terrible years of the Nazi occupation. The film premiered at the 2013 Telluride Film Festival and was also featured at the 2013 Toronto and 2014 Sundance film festivals.
“Ida” won the 2014 European Film Awards for Best European Film, Best European Director, Best European Screenwriter, Best European Cinematographer and the People’s Choice Award. The film was named the Best Foreign Language Film by the New York Film Critics Circle and won the 2014 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards for Best Supporting Actress (Agata Kulesza) and Best Foreign Language Film. "Ida" is also nominated for the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Award for Best International Film. It's also the Polish Oscar® entry and has made the 9-film shortlist.
Below is my interview with director Pawel Pawlikowski published last year prior to the film theatrical release:
I happen to love Jewish films and so when I saw "Ida" was playing in Toronto, it was first on my list of “must-sees”. However, I am no longer an “acquisitions” person, nor am I a film reviewer. My work keeps me out of the screening room because we work with filmmakers looking to get their films into the hands of those who will show their films. In other words, we advise and strategize for getting new films into the film circuit’s festivals, distributors' and international sales agents’ hands.
So I missed Ida at its Tiff debut. In Cartagena, where I was invited to cover the festival for SydneysBuzz and where I was gathering information for the book I have just completed on Iberoamerican Film Financing, it showed again in the jewel-box of a theater in this jewel-box of a city. But when I saw the first shots – and fell in love with it – I also saw it was subtitled in Spanish and rather than strain over translating, I left the theater. Later on, Pawel Pawlikowski and I sat next to each other at a fabulous dinner in one of Cartagena’s many outdoor squares, and we discussed the title of my book rather than his films which was a big loss on one hand but a big gain for me on the other because we got to speak as “civilians” rather than keeping the conversation on a “professional” level.
Read More: Review 'Ida' by Carlos Aguilar
Now Music Box is opening Ida in L.A. on May 2, 2014 at the Laemmle in L.A. and in N.Y. and I made sure to take advantage of my press status, not only to see the film but to interview Pawel on himself and the film.
There were two ways to look at this film: as a conceit, as in, “what a great story – a girl about to take her vows in the convent which raised her discovers she is Jewish and returns to the society which destroyed her family” -- or as a journey of a fresh soul into the heart of humanity and finds that she is blessed by being able to decide upon her own destiny within it.
Parenthetically, this seems to me to be a companion piece to the Berlinale film "Stations of the Cross", another journey of a fresh soul into the spiritual life of religion as she struggles in the society which formed her.
And so I began my interview with Pawel:
I could look at this film in two ways, I’ve heard the audiences talk about whether the film is Anti-Polish or Anti-Semitic, but that is not my concern, I want to know if it is just a great story or does it go deeper than that?
Pawel immediately responded, I Think he said, “I am not a professional filmmaker, and I do not make a ‘certain type of film’. I make films depending on where I am in life. A film about exile, a film about first love. Films mark where I am in my life.
In the '60s, when I was a kid and first saw the world this was how I depicted it in this film…seeing the world for the first time…life is a journey and filmmaking marks where you (the audience) are in life and it marks where I am in life. Each film is different as a result.
After making "Woman on the 5th," about the hero’s (in my own head) being lost in Paris, a weird sort of production – directed by a Polish director with a British and an American actor and actress, I craved solid ground, a familiar place or a “return” to important things of the past, and I returned to a certain period in Poland which I found very much alive, for myself then and again as I made this movie and in Polish history itself.
Ida takes place 17 years after the war and shortly after after Stalin’s crimes were being made public by Krushchev. The Totalitarian State of Poland bent a bit; censorship was lifted a bit and a new culture was developing. Music was jazz and rock and roll. Poland was very alive then: the spirit of going your own way, not caring what anyone thinks, creating a style in cinema, in art, music...
I myself was a young boy in the '60s and I left Poland in '71 when I was 13 to stay with my mother in England where she had married a Brit. My father lived in the West; they were divorced and I went for a holiday and stayed.
I went to school in the U.K. but at 13, I was thrown out and I went to Germany where my father lived and matriculated there. I couldn’t go back to Poland as I had left illegally and was only allowed back in to visit in the late '70s. I returned in 1980 during Solidarity and from 1989 to the fall of the Wall, I went back often.
Ida is a film about identity, family, faith, guilt, socialism and music. I wanted to make a film about history that wouldnʼt feel like a historical film— a film that is moral, but has no lessons to offer. I wanted to tell a story in which ʻeveryone has their reasonsʼ; a story closer to poetry than plot. Most of all, I wanted to steer clear of the usual rhetoric of the Polish cinema. The Poland in "Ida" is shown by an ʻoutsiderʼ with no ax to grind, filtered through personal memory and emotion, the sounds and images of childhood…
I read you are going to make another film about Poland…
It is not about Poland but it is set in Poland. I am working on three projects, which is how I work. I keep writing and find one of them has the legs to carry me…which one is not yet known.
You mentioned in an interview with Sight and Sound your top 10 films…
Yes, which ones did you like? They ask me this every year and every year the list changes for me. There are other good ones, like Once Upon a Time in Anatolia…they are not all the old classics and they are not necessarily my favorites or what I think are “the best”. Again they depend on where I am in my own life.
The ones I like on your list were Ashes and Diamonds which I saw in New York in my freshman year in college, "La Dolce Vita" …"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Some Like It Hot."
I actually think "8 ½" is more remarkable than "La Dolce Vita." I also like "Loves of a Blonde" very much….
I found "Ashes and Diamonds" so extraordinary, I then had to see the actor in "Man of Marble" which took me to the next "Man of Steel" and Man of…whatever... until I thought I knew Wadja. What did you make of this film?
I saw it later as I was too young when it came out in the '60s. I saw it in the '70s when it was already a classic. Its impact on me was that it was well-done and about something. It is a comment about a man who decides whether to fight or to live. It could be remade in any country coming out of civil war.
To return to Ida, I noticed stylistic choices you made that I would like you to comment on.
The landscapes and interiors were very large and sparse. Interiors always had someone in the back ground moving, arranging or walking by in silence.
Yes there is always some life and the movements of people in the background are like music in the film, though it is not really music…
Yes, the music in the film is great. The magnificence of the classical music someone is playing, like the aunt…
Yes I only want to use real music at times that real music is part of the story. I didn’t want film music. I wanted it to come out of silence. It is part of the scene like the background movement of people. Each piece means something. The pop songs were key from the start. They were fatally imprinted on my childhood memory. They really color the landscape. Coltrane and stuff came from my adult self.
Incidentally, the late '50s and early '60s were great for jazz in Poland. There was a real explosion: Komeda, Namyslowski, Stanko, Wroblewski... Apart from telling Idaʼs story, I wanted to conjure up a certain image of Poland, an image that I hold dear. My country may have been grey, oppressive and enslaved in the early '60s, but in some ways it was 'cooler' and more original than the Poland of today, and somehow more universally resonant.
Iʼm sure that lots of Poles with a chip on their shoulder, and there are many, will fail to notice the beauty, the love that went into our film—and will accuse me of damaging Poland's image by focusing on the melancholy, the provincial, the grotesque… And then there's the matter of a Polish farmer killing a Jewish family… thereʼs bound to be trouble. On the other hand, thereʼs also a Stalinist state prosecutor of Jewish origins, which might land me in hot water in other quarters. Still, I hope the film is sufficiently specific and un-rhetorical enough to be understood on its own terms.
The music Ida’s aunt was playing before she…what are your thoughts about her aunt?
Neither Ida nor her aunt is typical. Wanda’s imprimatur is that she has no self-pity, no regrets, no sentimentality.
She had fought in the resistance rather than raise a family. She had been a super idealistic Marxist, became a part of the New Establishment and got drawn into the games and hypocrisy, sending people to death for “impeding progress”.
She reminds me of my father in some ways. Her acerbic sense of humor. I gave her some of my father’s lines.
Where Did The Character Of Wanda Come From?
When I was doing my post-graduate degree at Oxford in the early '80s I befriended Professor Brus, a genial economist and reformist Marxist who left Poland in ʻ68. I was particularly fond of his wife Helena, who smoked, drank, joked and told great stories. She didn't suffer fools gladly, but she struck me as a warm and generous woman. I lost touch with the Bruses when I left Oxford, but some 10 years later I heard on BBC News that the Polish government was requesting the extradition of one Helena Brus-Wolinska, resident in Oxford, on the grounds of crimes against humanity. It turned out that the charming old lady had been a Stalinist prosecutor in her late twenties. Among other things, she engineered the death in a show trial of a completely innocent man and a real hero of the Resistance, General ‘Nil’ Fieldorf. It was a bit of a shock. I couldn't square the warm, ironic woman I knew with the ruthless fanatic and Stalinist hangman. This paradox has haunted me for years. I even tried to write a film about her, but couldnʼt get my head around or into someone so contradictory. Putting her into Idaʼs story helped bring that character to life. Conversely, putting the ex-believer with blood on her hands next to Ida helped me define the character and the journey of the young nun.
By 1956, illusions about society were gone. Stalin’s crimes were revealed in 1961, there was a change of government, a new generation was coming of age. Wanda was a judge they called “Red Wanda” and had sent enemies of the state to their deaths. The older generation was left high and dry. Communism had become a shabby reality. Her despair was apparent– she had been heroic and now the system was a joke.
And then some creature from the past pops up and makes her reveal all she had swept under the carpet. She drank too much, there was no love in her life, only casual sex. But still she was straight-ahead, directed and unstoppable.
And then after the revelations of what had become of their parents and her child, her sister returns to the convent. There is nowhere for her to go. She hits a wall. She is heroic and there is no place for her in society anymore.
And Ida? Why did you choose such a person?
Ida has multiple origins, the most interesting ones probably not quite conscious. Let's say that I come from a family full of mysteries and contradictions and have lived in one sort of exile or another for most of my life. Questions of identity, family, blood, faith, belonging, and history have always been present.
I'd been playing for years with the story of a Catholic nun who discovers sheʼs Jewish. I originally set it in ʻ68, the year of student protests and the Communist Party sponsored anti-Semitic purges in Poland. The story involved a nun a bit older than Ida, as well as an embattled bishop and a state security officer, and the whole thing was more steeped in the politics of the day. The script was turning out a little too schematic, thriller-ish and plotty for my liking, so I put Ida aside for a while and went to Paris to make The Woman In The Fifth . I was in a different place at the time.
When I came back to Ida, I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted the film to be. My cowriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz and I stripped the whole thing down, made it less plotty, the characters richer and less functional. Ida became younger, more inexperienced, more of a blank slate, a young girl on the brink of life. Also we moved the story to ʻ62, a more nondescript period in Poland, but also a time of which I have most vivid memories, my own impressions as a child - unaware of what was going on in the adult world, but all the more sensitive to images and sounds. Some shots in the film couldʼve come from my family album.
In the course of the film, Ida undergoes a change. She becomes energized. When she returns to the convent you can see it in her body movements. It is the only time we used a hand-held camera to depict the new energy she has acquired. She is going into the spiritual in a different way. The old way elicited a giggle from her; she had seen the sensuality of the novice nun bathing…whether she is returning to the convent to stay is left to the viewer to decide.
The viewer is brought into a space of associations they make on their own, the film is more like poetry where the feeling of the viewer is the private one of the viewer, not one the film imposes.
Yes, each woman enters a new reality and comes out changed, and I was left thinking there was nothing better of the two life choices, the “normal” life of love and family and the “spiritual” life of simple living and silent devotion. There needs to be some balance between the two, but what is that? I still don’t know.
On a last note: I noticed in the end credits you thanked Alfonso Cuarón. Why was that?
Yes he liked the film a lot. There were many people I thanked, like Agnieszka Holland. These are friends I can show my work to. They protect me against critics and festivals. This group of friends can also be nasty, but they are honest friends.
Thank you so much Pawel for your insights. I look forward to meeting you again “on the circuit”.
To my readers, here are the nuts and bolts of the film:
Music Box Films is the proud U.S. distributor of "Ida," the award-winning film written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Ida world premiered at Telluride 2013 and Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Fipresci Award for Best Film; then played the London Film Festival where it won Best Film, and was the Grand Prix winner at the Warsaw Film Festival. It played as an Official Selection in the 2014 Sundance and New York Jewish Film Festivals.
Poland 1962. Anna (newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska) is a beautiful eighteen-year-old woman, preparing to become a nun at the convent where she has lived since orphaned as a child. She learns she has a living relative she must visit before taking her vows, her mother’s sister Wanda. Her aunt, she learns, is not only a former hard-line Communist state prosecutor notorious for sentencing priests and others to death, but also a Jew. Anna learns from her aunt that she too is Jewish - and that her real name is Ida. This revelation sets Anna, now Ida, on a journey to uncover her roots and confront the truth about her family. Together, the two women embark on a voyage of discovery of each other and their past. Ida has to choose between her birth identity and the religion that saved her from the massacres of the Nazi occupation of Poland. And Wanda must confront decisions she made during the War when she chose loyalty to the cause before family.
Following his breakthrough films "Last Resort" and BAFTA-award winning "My Summer of Love," "Ida" marks Polish-born, British writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski's first film set in his homeland. Ida stars Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza. It will open in Los Angeles on May 2 at the Laemmle's Royal. (Music Box Films, 80 minutes, unrated).
Its international producers, Eric Abraham (Portobello Pictures), Ewa Puszczynska (Opus Film), Piotr Dzieciol (Opus Film) and coproducer, Christian Falkenberg Husum of Denmark sold about 30 territories in Toronto and to date it has sold to 43 territories where the film has opened.
Argentina - Cdi Films, Australia - Curious Film, Austria - Polyfilm is still playing it and to date it has grossed Us$10,733. Benelux – Cineart where it is also still playing and has grossed Us$185,026 in Belgium and Us$131,247 in The Netherlands, Canada – Eyesteelfilm and Films We Like, Czech Republic – Aerofilms, Denmark - Camera Film, Denmark - Portobello Film Sales, France - Memento Films Distribution where in three weeks it grossed $3,192,706, Germany - Arsenal and Maxmedien where it grossed $24,010, Greece - Strada Films, Hungary - Mozinet Ltd., Israel - Lev Films (Shani Films), Italy - Parthenos where it grossed $681,460., Norway – Arthaus grossed $59,920, Poland – Soloban where it grossed $333,714, Portugal - Midas Filmes, Spain - Caramel Films is still playing it and to date it has grossed $408,085, Sweden - Folkets Bio, Switzerland - Frenetic, Taiwan - Andrews Film Co. Ltd, U.K. - Artificial Eye and Curzon, U.S. – Music Box and Film Forum.
Production
(Poland) An Opus Film, Phoenix Film production in association with Portobello Pictures in coproduction with Canal Plus Poland, Phoenix Film Poland. (International sales: Fandango Portobello, Copenhagen.) Produced by Eric Abraham, Piotr Dzieciol, Ewa Puszczynska. Coproducer, Christian Falkenberg Husum.
Crew
Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Screenplay, Pawlikowski, Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Camera (B&W), Lukasz Zal, Ryszard Lenczewski; editor, Jaroslaw Kaminski; production designers, Katarzyna Sobanska, Marcel Slawinski; costume designer, Aleksandra Staszko; Kristian Selin Eidnes Andersen; supervising sound editor, Claus Lynge; re-recording mixers, Lynge, Andreas Kongsgaard; visual effects, Stage 2; line producer, Magdalena Malisz; associate producer, Sofie Wanting Hassing.
With
Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik, Joanna Kulig.
“Ida” won the 2014 European Film Awards for Best European Film, Best European Director, Best European Screenwriter, Best European Cinematographer and the People’s Choice Award. The film was named the Best Foreign Language Film by the New York Film Critics Circle and won the 2014 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards for Best Supporting Actress (Agata Kulesza) and Best Foreign Language Film. "Ida" is also nominated for the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Award for Best International Film. It's also the Polish Oscar® entry and has made the 9-film shortlist.
Below is my interview with director Pawel Pawlikowski published last year prior to the film theatrical release:
I happen to love Jewish films and so when I saw "Ida" was playing in Toronto, it was first on my list of “must-sees”. However, I am no longer an “acquisitions” person, nor am I a film reviewer. My work keeps me out of the screening room because we work with filmmakers looking to get their films into the hands of those who will show their films. In other words, we advise and strategize for getting new films into the film circuit’s festivals, distributors' and international sales agents’ hands.
So I missed Ida at its Tiff debut. In Cartagena, where I was invited to cover the festival for SydneysBuzz and where I was gathering information for the book I have just completed on Iberoamerican Film Financing, it showed again in the jewel-box of a theater in this jewel-box of a city. But when I saw the first shots – and fell in love with it – I also saw it was subtitled in Spanish and rather than strain over translating, I left the theater. Later on, Pawel Pawlikowski and I sat next to each other at a fabulous dinner in one of Cartagena’s many outdoor squares, and we discussed the title of my book rather than his films which was a big loss on one hand but a big gain for me on the other because we got to speak as “civilians” rather than keeping the conversation on a “professional” level.
Read More: Review 'Ida' by Carlos Aguilar
Now Music Box is opening Ida in L.A. on May 2, 2014 at the Laemmle in L.A. and in N.Y. and I made sure to take advantage of my press status, not only to see the film but to interview Pawel on himself and the film.
There were two ways to look at this film: as a conceit, as in, “what a great story – a girl about to take her vows in the convent which raised her discovers she is Jewish and returns to the society which destroyed her family” -- or as a journey of a fresh soul into the heart of humanity and finds that she is blessed by being able to decide upon her own destiny within it.
Parenthetically, this seems to me to be a companion piece to the Berlinale film "Stations of the Cross", another journey of a fresh soul into the spiritual life of religion as she struggles in the society which formed her.
And so I began my interview with Pawel:
I could look at this film in two ways, I’ve heard the audiences talk about whether the film is Anti-Polish or Anti-Semitic, but that is not my concern, I want to know if it is just a great story or does it go deeper than that?
Pawel immediately responded, I Think he said, “I am not a professional filmmaker, and I do not make a ‘certain type of film’. I make films depending on where I am in life. A film about exile, a film about first love. Films mark where I am in my life.
In the '60s, when I was a kid and first saw the world this was how I depicted it in this film…seeing the world for the first time…life is a journey and filmmaking marks where you (the audience) are in life and it marks where I am in life. Each film is different as a result.
After making "Woman on the 5th," about the hero’s (in my own head) being lost in Paris, a weird sort of production – directed by a Polish director with a British and an American actor and actress, I craved solid ground, a familiar place or a “return” to important things of the past, and I returned to a certain period in Poland which I found very much alive, for myself then and again as I made this movie and in Polish history itself.
Ida takes place 17 years after the war and shortly after after Stalin’s crimes were being made public by Krushchev. The Totalitarian State of Poland bent a bit; censorship was lifted a bit and a new culture was developing. Music was jazz and rock and roll. Poland was very alive then: the spirit of going your own way, not caring what anyone thinks, creating a style in cinema, in art, music...
I myself was a young boy in the '60s and I left Poland in '71 when I was 13 to stay with my mother in England where she had married a Brit. My father lived in the West; they were divorced and I went for a holiday and stayed.
I went to school in the U.K. but at 13, I was thrown out and I went to Germany where my father lived and matriculated there. I couldn’t go back to Poland as I had left illegally and was only allowed back in to visit in the late '70s. I returned in 1980 during Solidarity and from 1989 to the fall of the Wall, I went back often.
Ida is a film about identity, family, faith, guilt, socialism and music. I wanted to make a film about history that wouldnʼt feel like a historical film— a film that is moral, but has no lessons to offer. I wanted to tell a story in which ʻeveryone has their reasonsʼ; a story closer to poetry than plot. Most of all, I wanted to steer clear of the usual rhetoric of the Polish cinema. The Poland in "Ida" is shown by an ʻoutsiderʼ with no ax to grind, filtered through personal memory and emotion, the sounds and images of childhood…
I read you are going to make another film about Poland…
It is not about Poland but it is set in Poland. I am working on three projects, which is how I work. I keep writing and find one of them has the legs to carry me…which one is not yet known.
You mentioned in an interview with Sight and Sound your top 10 films…
Yes, which ones did you like? They ask me this every year and every year the list changes for me. There are other good ones, like Once Upon a Time in Anatolia…they are not all the old classics and they are not necessarily my favorites or what I think are “the best”. Again they depend on where I am in my own life.
The ones I like on your list were Ashes and Diamonds which I saw in New York in my freshman year in college, "La Dolce Vita" …"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Some Like It Hot."
I actually think "8 ½" is more remarkable than "La Dolce Vita." I also like "Loves of a Blonde" very much….
I found "Ashes and Diamonds" so extraordinary, I then had to see the actor in "Man of Marble" which took me to the next "Man of Steel" and Man of…whatever... until I thought I knew Wadja. What did you make of this film?
I saw it later as I was too young when it came out in the '60s. I saw it in the '70s when it was already a classic. Its impact on me was that it was well-done and about something. It is a comment about a man who decides whether to fight or to live. It could be remade in any country coming out of civil war.
To return to Ida, I noticed stylistic choices you made that I would like you to comment on.
The landscapes and interiors were very large and sparse. Interiors always had someone in the back ground moving, arranging or walking by in silence.
Yes there is always some life and the movements of people in the background are like music in the film, though it is not really music…
Yes, the music in the film is great. The magnificence of the classical music someone is playing, like the aunt…
Yes I only want to use real music at times that real music is part of the story. I didn’t want film music. I wanted it to come out of silence. It is part of the scene like the background movement of people. Each piece means something. The pop songs were key from the start. They were fatally imprinted on my childhood memory. They really color the landscape. Coltrane and stuff came from my adult self.
Incidentally, the late '50s and early '60s were great for jazz in Poland. There was a real explosion: Komeda, Namyslowski, Stanko, Wroblewski... Apart from telling Idaʼs story, I wanted to conjure up a certain image of Poland, an image that I hold dear. My country may have been grey, oppressive and enslaved in the early '60s, but in some ways it was 'cooler' and more original than the Poland of today, and somehow more universally resonant.
Iʼm sure that lots of Poles with a chip on their shoulder, and there are many, will fail to notice the beauty, the love that went into our film—and will accuse me of damaging Poland's image by focusing on the melancholy, the provincial, the grotesque… And then there's the matter of a Polish farmer killing a Jewish family… thereʼs bound to be trouble. On the other hand, thereʼs also a Stalinist state prosecutor of Jewish origins, which might land me in hot water in other quarters. Still, I hope the film is sufficiently specific and un-rhetorical enough to be understood on its own terms.
The music Ida’s aunt was playing before she…what are your thoughts about her aunt?
Neither Ida nor her aunt is typical. Wanda’s imprimatur is that she has no self-pity, no regrets, no sentimentality.
She had fought in the resistance rather than raise a family. She had been a super idealistic Marxist, became a part of the New Establishment and got drawn into the games and hypocrisy, sending people to death for “impeding progress”.
She reminds me of my father in some ways. Her acerbic sense of humor. I gave her some of my father’s lines.
Where Did The Character Of Wanda Come From?
When I was doing my post-graduate degree at Oxford in the early '80s I befriended Professor Brus, a genial economist and reformist Marxist who left Poland in ʻ68. I was particularly fond of his wife Helena, who smoked, drank, joked and told great stories. She didn't suffer fools gladly, but she struck me as a warm and generous woman. I lost touch with the Bruses when I left Oxford, but some 10 years later I heard on BBC News that the Polish government was requesting the extradition of one Helena Brus-Wolinska, resident in Oxford, on the grounds of crimes against humanity. It turned out that the charming old lady had been a Stalinist prosecutor in her late twenties. Among other things, she engineered the death in a show trial of a completely innocent man and a real hero of the Resistance, General ‘Nil’ Fieldorf. It was a bit of a shock. I couldn't square the warm, ironic woman I knew with the ruthless fanatic and Stalinist hangman. This paradox has haunted me for years. I even tried to write a film about her, but couldnʼt get my head around or into someone so contradictory. Putting her into Idaʼs story helped bring that character to life. Conversely, putting the ex-believer with blood on her hands next to Ida helped me define the character and the journey of the young nun.
By 1956, illusions about society were gone. Stalin’s crimes were revealed in 1961, there was a change of government, a new generation was coming of age. Wanda was a judge they called “Red Wanda” and had sent enemies of the state to their deaths. The older generation was left high and dry. Communism had become a shabby reality. Her despair was apparent– she had been heroic and now the system was a joke.
And then some creature from the past pops up and makes her reveal all she had swept under the carpet. She drank too much, there was no love in her life, only casual sex. But still she was straight-ahead, directed and unstoppable.
And then after the revelations of what had become of their parents and her child, her sister returns to the convent. There is nowhere for her to go. She hits a wall. She is heroic and there is no place for her in society anymore.
And Ida? Why did you choose such a person?
Ida has multiple origins, the most interesting ones probably not quite conscious. Let's say that I come from a family full of mysteries and contradictions and have lived in one sort of exile or another for most of my life. Questions of identity, family, blood, faith, belonging, and history have always been present.
I'd been playing for years with the story of a Catholic nun who discovers sheʼs Jewish. I originally set it in ʻ68, the year of student protests and the Communist Party sponsored anti-Semitic purges in Poland. The story involved a nun a bit older than Ida, as well as an embattled bishop and a state security officer, and the whole thing was more steeped in the politics of the day. The script was turning out a little too schematic, thriller-ish and plotty for my liking, so I put Ida aside for a while and went to Paris to make The Woman In The Fifth . I was in a different place at the time.
When I came back to Ida, I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted the film to be. My cowriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz and I stripped the whole thing down, made it less plotty, the characters richer and less functional. Ida became younger, more inexperienced, more of a blank slate, a young girl on the brink of life. Also we moved the story to ʻ62, a more nondescript period in Poland, but also a time of which I have most vivid memories, my own impressions as a child - unaware of what was going on in the adult world, but all the more sensitive to images and sounds. Some shots in the film couldʼve come from my family album.
In the course of the film, Ida undergoes a change. She becomes energized. When she returns to the convent you can see it in her body movements. It is the only time we used a hand-held camera to depict the new energy she has acquired. She is going into the spiritual in a different way. The old way elicited a giggle from her; she had seen the sensuality of the novice nun bathing…whether she is returning to the convent to stay is left to the viewer to decide.
The viewer is brought into a space of associations they make on their own, the film is more like poetry where the feeling of the viewer is the private one of the viewer, not one the film imposes.
Yes, each woman enters a new reality and comes out changed, and I was left thinking there was nothing better of the two life choices, the “normal” life of love and family and the “spiritual” life of simple living and silent devotion. There needs to be some balance between the two, but what is that? I still don’t know.
On a last note: I noticed in the end credits you thanked Alfonso Cuarón. Why was that?
Yes he liked the film a lot. There were many people I thanked, like Agnieszka Holland. These are friends I can show my work to. They protect me against critics and festivals. This group of friends can also be nasty, but they are honest friends.
Thank you so much Pawel for your insights. I look forward to meeting you again “on the circuit”.
To my readers, here are the nuts and bolts of the film:
Music Box Films is the proud U.S. distributor of "Ida," the award-winning film written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Ida world premiered at Telluride 2013 and Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Fipresci Award for Best Film; then played the London Film Festival where it won Best Film, and was the Grand Prix winner at the Warsaw Film Festival. It played as an Official Selection in the 2014 Sundance and New York Jewish Film Festivals.
Poland 1962. Anna (newcomer Agata Trzebuchowska) is a beautiful eighteen-year-old woman, preparing to become a nun at the convent where she has lived since orphaned as a child. She learns she has a living relative she must visit before taking her vows, her mother’s sister Wanda. Her aunt, she learns, is not only a former hard-line Communist state prosecutor notorious for sentencing priests and others to death, but also a Jew. Anna learns from her aunt that she too is Jewish - and that her real name is Ida. This revelation sets Anna, now Ida, on a journey to uncover her roots and confront the truth about her family. Together, the two women embark on a voyage of discovery of each other and their past. Ida has to choose between her birth identity and the religion that saved her from the massacres of the Nazi occupation of Poland. And Wanda must confront decisions she made during the War when she chose loyalty to the cause before family.
Following his breakthrough films "Last Resort" and BAFTA-award winning "My Summer of Love," "Ida" marks Polish-born, British writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski's first film set in his homeland. Ida stars Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza. It will open in Los Angeles on May 2 at the Laemmle's Royal. (Music Box Films, 80 minutes, unrated).
Its international producers, Eric Abraham (Portobello Pictures), Ewa Puszczynska (Opus Film), Piotr Dzieciol (Opus Film) and coproducer, Christian Falkenberg Husum of Denmark sold about 30 territories in Toronto and to date it has sold to 43 territories where the film has opened.
Argentina - Cdi Films, Australia - Curious Film, Austria - Polyfilm is still playing it and to date it has grossed Us$10,733. Benelux – Cineart where it is also still playing and has grossed Us$185,026 in Belgium and Us$131,247 in The Netherlands, Canada – Eyesteelfilm and Films We Like, Czech Republic – Aerofilms, Denmark - Camera Film, Denmark - Portobello Film Sales, France - Memento Films Distribution where in three weeks it grossed $3,192,706, Germany - Arsenal and Maxmedien where it grossed $24,010, Greece - Strada Films, Hungary - Mozinet Ltd., Israel - Lev Films (Shani Films), Italy - Parthenos where it grossed $681,460., Norway – Arthaus grossed $59,920, Poland – Soloban where it grossed $333,714, Portugal - Midas Filmes, Spain - Caramel Films is still playing it and to date it has grossed $408,085, Sweden - Folkets Bio, Switzerland - Frenetic, Taiwan - Andrews Film Co. Ltd, U.K. - Artificial Eye and Curzon, U.S. – Music Box and Film Forum.
Production
(Poland) An Opus Film, Phoenix Film production in association with Portobello Pictures in coproduction with Canal Plus Poland, Phoenix Film Poland. (International sales: Fandango Portobello, Copenhagen.) Produced by Eric Abraham, Piotr Dzieciol, Ewa Puszczynska. Coproducer, Christian Falkenberg Husum.
Crew
Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Screenplay, Pawlikowski, Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Camera (B&W), Lukasz Zal, Ryszard Lenczewski; editor, Jaroslaw Kaminski; production designers, Katarzyna Sobanska, Marcel Slawinski; costume designer, Aleksandra Staszko; Kristian Selin Eidnes Andersen; supervising sound editor, Claus Lynge; re-recording mixers, Lynge, Andreas Kongsgaard; visual effects, Stage 2; line producer, Magdalena Malisz; associate producer, Sofie Wanting Hassing.
With
Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik, Joanna Kulig.
- 1/8/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
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