Film Archive

Waves

Official Selection - Competition 2016 / Fale / Poland 2016

Ania and Kasia are hairstyling apprentices spending time between school, shifts at a salon in a deserted Kraków housing complex, and home where relations with parents are far from harmonious. The story of two likably headstrong girls on their way to adulthood was shot with an emphasis on authenticity, and it can’t help but recall the best work of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

Synopsis

For Ania and Kasia adulthood is just around the corner. They’re in training with a hairstylist and their future seems bright. Kasia is perhaps more skillful than Ania, who can’t get the hang of doing perms; but the latter also suffers from a lack of understanding at home, although neither has very harmonious relations with her parents. The small hair salon in the Kraków suburb of Nowa Huta and the deserted prefab housing complex where it’s located bear witness to seemingly mundane yet fundamental moments that occur between a carefree childhood and the complication and compromise of being an adult. Young filmmaker Grzegorz Zariczny eschews stylization and the mocking up of reality; a stager with the eye of a documentarist, he easily peels away appearances, adeptly highlighting the emotional complexity of the situation. The impression of authenticity, reminiscent of the films of the Czechoslovak New Wave, is only strengthened by the fact that the two likably headstrong girls in the imaginative story were portrayed by charismatic nonprofessional actors and actual future hairstylists.

Karel Och

About the film

78 min / Color, DCP
World premiere
Director Grzegorz Zariczny / Screenplay Grzegorz Zariczny / Dir. of Photography Weronika Bilska / Editor Bartek Pietras / Art Director Grzegorz Piątkowski / Producer Ewa Jastrzębska / Production Munk Studio - Polish Filmmakers Association / Coproduction Polish Television, Krakow Festival Office / Cast Anna Kęsek, Katarzyna Kopeć, Tomasz Schimscheiner, Beata Schimscheiner, Edyta Torhan, Jolanta Olszewska, Artur Krajewski / Contact Munk Studio - Polish Filmmakers Association

About the director

Grzegorz Zariczny (b. 1983, Kokotów, Poland) attended Jerzy Ridan’s film workshops while in high school in the Nowa Huta suburb of Kraków. In 2005–12 he studied film direction at the Faculty of Radio and Television of the University of Silesia in Katowice, graduating with the short Our Bad Winter (Special Jury Prize at the Gdynia fest). 2008 saw him participate in a documentary course held at the Wajda School in Warsaw. The film he made there, The Dog Hill (Marysina polana, 2010), took awards at home and abroad. In 2012 he shot the short documentary Whistle, made possible by Munk Studio and the Polish Filmmakers Association. Zariczny walked away with the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2013. Waves is his feature film debut.