Cinema
Interrogation
Przesłuchanie
Ryszard Bugajski · 1989
Synopsis
In the early fifties, in Stalinist Poland, Antonina Dziwisz, known as Tonia, a cabaret singer with no political commitment, is arrested for no reason by the political police and thrown into prison, so that her confessions can be used to incriminate a man she once knew. The interrogations by the major whom her jailers nickname Kąpielowy, then torture, only awaken in her the stubbornness and resistance, first instinctive, then conscious, that make her a different woman.
Context
The director conceived the project after the strikes of 1980 and published his screenplay in 1981 in the journal Dialog, before tightening it to the detention alone. Shot in 1981 and 1982 at the X unit, under the responsibility of Andrzej Wajda, the film was condemned by the acceptance commission, which called for the negative to be destroyed; the crew hid reels under building materials. It led to the dissolution of the X unit on 1 May 1983, circulated in clandestine copies and was released only on 13 December 1989.
Who it is for
About one hundred and ten minutes in Polish; the film shows at length the violence and humiliations of detention.
Prizes and reception
Best Actress prize at Cannes in 1990 for Krystyna Janda, audience and journalists' prize at Gdynia, Złota Kaczka for best Polish film.
Sources for this page 10
The pages consulted to check this page.