"In hiding" - film at the Warsaw Film Festival

, 16 November 2016
This Monday, at the 29th edition of the Warsaw Film Festival, Jan Kidawa-Błoński’s most recent film ‘W ukryciu’ (In Hiding) will have its European premier. It has been previously shown only once in Pusan. The two main female protagonists are played by Magdalena Boczarska (as Janina) and by Julia Pogrebiński (as Estera), who is making her debut on the big screen. Tomasz Kot, Krzysztof Stroiński, Jacek Braciak and Agata Kulesza are also starring.

The film tells the story of two women whose life paths crossed during WWII. The film starts in the Summer of 1944 in Radom. Germans are in the process of finishing the liquidation of the ghetto. Janina is a young woman who has just come back home. She meets a dark-haired girl in the flat of her father, who is a photographer. She turns out to be Estera, the daughter of Janina’s father’s friend, who has been rescued from the local ghetto. Initially, Janina does not want to accept the presence of the Jewish girl in her home. It changes after Janina’s father is captured during a roundup. Since then, Janina and Estera must rely on each other. Janina is doing her best to prevent anyone from getting in their way. She sends away both her father’s friend who helped in the photo studio and her lover. Estera is a dancer, Janina plays violin. Both women share their meals, dance and listen to music together, starting to talk to each other more often. They are becoming closer. Eventually, an erotic feeling comes into play.

Their relation becomes very dynamic. First, Janina, as a caretaker, dominates over Estera, who has no choice but surrender. However, the situation changes dramatically when feelings appear. The films brings a clash of two kinds of egoism into the foreground: the one of a woman who falls in love and the other of the woman who goes to any lengths to survive.

Jan Kidawa-Błoński – Polish director, producer and a screenwriter. Born in Chorzów in 1953, Kidawa-Błoński studied architecture at the Silesian University of Technology and graduated from the filmmaking department at National Film School in Łódź (WSFTT). From 1990 to 1994, he presided over the Association of Polish Filmmakers (SFP). He is also a member of the Polish Film Academy and winner of many awards, such as Golden Lions at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, the prize for the best director and the audience award at the festival in Moscow for his film ‘Różyczka’ (2010).