Filip is young, happy and wants to marry his fiancée, Sara. And yet in the Warsaw Ghetto of 1941 it’s impossible to make long-term plans. Sara and Filip's parents are brutally murdered by the Nazis. Two years later we find Filip in Frankfurt am Main. With the help of the smuggler Staszek he ends up in a luxury hotel where, alongside fellow European forced laborers, he is required to work as a waiter. In Frankfurt he passes as French. In his free time, he and his Belgian friend Pierre pick up German women in order to, in his words, make “whores” of them. He keeps his feelings to himself; he only wants one thing: to survive. And yet when Filip meets an old Polish friend, his true identity is at risk of being exposed.
Michał Kwieciński's film tells a quite incredible story, one inspired by the life of Polish Jewish author Leopold Tyrmand. Even in a life that was luxurious by wartime standards, dangers lurk everywhere, with the foreign hotel employees constantly exposed to the arbitrariness and brutality of the Gestapo. This suspense-packed film from Poland, in which Eryk Kulm stands out with his outstanding performance in the role of Filip, speaks of how young people continue to yearn to love, dance and listen to jazz, even under the most adverse of circumstances.
Text: Kira Taszman
English: Peter Rickerby
At all screenings, except Sat,17.6., lead actor Eryk Kulm Jr will be present for a film talk after the film.
