Film Archive

Dear Ones

East of the West Competition 2021 / Bliscy / Poland, Czech Republic 2021

Piotr’s father, whom he hasn’t seen for ages, calls him out of the blue and asks him to pay a visit. When he tells Piotr and his sister that their mother has gone missing without a word, the members of this estranged family start searching for her and, along the way, find out all sorts of weird stuff… Employing outlandish and, at times, absurd humour, Grzegorz Jaroszuk examines the theme of loneliness and conveys how difficult or even impossible it is to communicate with other people, particularly our nearest and dearest.

Synopsis

Piotr’s father, whom he hasn’t seen for ages, calls him out of the blue and asks him to pay a visit. When he tells Piotr and his sister that their mother has gone missing, the members of this estranged family start searching for her and, along the way, find out all sorts of weird stuff… In his second feature Polish director Grzegorz Jaroszuk takes up the stylistic thread of his previous work. With his outlandish and, at times, absurd humour, he launches on this occasion further into his exploration of loneliness, which his heroes struggle with in their own way, and conveys how difficult or even impossible it is to communicate with others, particularly our nearest and dearest. The role of the woebegone father is empathically rendered by renowned actor Olaf Lubaszenko (A Short Film About Love, Sekal Has to Die).

Lenka Tyrpáková

About the film

74 min / Color, DCP
World premiere
Director Grzegorz Jaroszuk / Screenplay Grzegorz Jaroszuk / Dir. of Photography John Magnus Borge, Robert Lis / Music Petr Ostrouchov / Editor Krzysztof Komander / Art Director Magdalena Dipont, Paweł Baryła, Antonín Šilar / Producer Agnieszka Kurzydło / Production MD4 / Coproduction Axman Production, EC1 Łódź, za podpory / with the support of: Polish Film Institute, Czech Film Fund, City of Łódź / Cast Olaf Lubaszenko, Adam Bobik, Izabela Gwizdak, Piotr Żurawski / Sales ANT!PODE Sales & Distribution / Contact Anisya Kazakova

About the director

Grzegorz Jaroszuk (1983, Warsaw). Selected filmography: Story of a Missing Car (Historia o braku samochodu, 2009, short), Frozen Stories (Opowiesci z chlodni, 2011, short), Kebab & Horoscope (Kebab i Horoskop, 2014), Story of Nothing (Mine de rien, 2015, short), Dear Ones (Bliscy, 2021).