Scream

It is the kind of scream one sometimes longs to let out. The kind of raw, guttural cry that seems to rise from the depths, like the howl captured in Edvard Munch’s painting. That is the sound made by the young woman played by Dorota Stalińska. It is the cry of an animal caught in a trap. Or perhaps it is the director’s own cry of protest against the world depicted in the film – a world that crushes the heroine’s potential.

The girl known as Little Pearl is bursting with energy: she runs, jumps, and sways as she walks, like a princess from Warsaw’s Praga district. She is like a jewel hidden in the rubbish heap she has been forced to inhabit – a filthy den shared with her perpetually drunken mother (Iga Cembrzyńska), and a world of hangers-on lingering around the local beer kiosk. The retirement home where she finds work is neither peaceful nor clean. Corruption and backroom arrangements reduce her dreams of escaping the dirt to dust, and crush a budding feeling before it has the chance to grow. It makes you want to howl.

It is no coincidence that this timeless film found its place on the Polish Film Heritage List compiled by the National Film Archive – Audiovisual Institute.

Dorota Roszkowska, Barbara Młynarz-Pomorska

Barbara Sass (1936–2015) – Polish film director and screenwriter. She initially studied acting at the Łódź Film School (PWSFTviT), but eventually graduated from its Directing Department. Early in her career she worked as an assistant to prominent filmmakers, including Wojciech Jerzy Has. After directing several short television films, she made her feature debut with Without Love (1980), which won the Best Debut award at the Polish Film Festival in Gdańsk and the FIPRESCI Prize at the Mannheim Film Festival. With the exception of Caged (1987), all of her films are portraits of women. Set against different historical backdrops, they form a distinctive and universal voice within women’s cinema, still relatively underrepresented in Poland. Her regular cinematographer was her husband, Wiesław Zdort.

11th New Horizons IFF Catalogue

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