PRESSBOOK BEYOND WORDS DIRECTED AND WRITTEN BY URSZULA ANTONIAK WITH JAKUB GIERSZAL, ANDRZEJ CHYRA, CHRISTIAN LÖBER, JUSTYNA WASILEWSA PRODUCED BY OPUS FILM - PIOTR DZIĘCIOŁ, LUKASZ DZIĘCIOŁ FAMILY AFFAIR FILMS – FLOOR ONRUST, NOORTJE WILSCHUT THIS PRODUCTION WAS SUPPORTED BY THE POLISH FILM INSTITUTE, EC1 LÓDŹ – CITY OF CULTURE, THE NETHERLANDS FILM FUND, THE NETHERLANDS PRODUCTION INCENTIVE, EURIMAGES DURATION: 85 MINS POLAND / THE NETHERLANDS 2017 WORLD SALES: GLOBAL SCREEN GMBH | SONNENSTR. 21 | 80331 MUNICH | GERMANY [email protected] | WWW.GLOBALSCREEN.DE/CINEMA PH +49 89 2441 295 500 | F +49 89 2441 295 520 2 CAST MICHAEL JAKUB GIERSZAŁ STANISLAW ANDRZEJ CHYRA FRANZ CHRISTIAN LÖBER ALIN JUSTYNA WASILEWSKA CREW DIRECTOR URSZULA ANTONIAK WRITER URSZULA ANTONIAK PRODUCER PIOTR DZIĘCIOŁ LUKASZ DZIĘCIOŁ FLOOR ONRUST NOORTJE WILSCHUT LINE PRODUCER ALEKSANDRA SKRABA CHRIS STENGER DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY LENNERT HILLEGE, NSC EDITOR MILENIA FIDLER, PSM SOUND DESIGN JAN SCHERMER PRODUCTION DESIGNER MIREN OLLER KATARZYNA JĘDRZEJCZYK COSTUME DESIGNER PAULINA SIENIARSKA HELEEN HEIJNTJES MAKE UP DEPARTMENT ANNA KIESZCZYŃSKA 3 SYNOPSIS Nothing in Michael, a young and successful Berlin lawyer, gives away his Polish roots. The sudden appearance of his father, who was long presumed dead, plunges Michael into an existential crisis. After his father leaves, Michael can’t return to his life as a German. Michael and his boss and best friend Franz feel at home in Berlin’s hip restaurants, bars and clubs. There is seemingly no difference between them, but Michael, who emigrated from Poland after the death of his mother several years ago, still pays extra attention to his accent. Michael is thrown into turmoil when a run-down Polish bohemian shows up on his doorstep and claims to be his father. Father and son, two complete strangers spend a weekend together, torn between empathy, rejection and mistrust. As Michael’s roots catch up with him, a painful crisis seems inevitable... BEYOND WORDS is the fourth feature film by the multiple award-winning writer-director Urszula Antoniak (“Nothing Personal”, “Code Blue”, “Nude Area”). Shot on black and white, the highly atmospheric and multi-layered drama touches on the difficult subject of assimilation and identity. From the producers of Oscar® winning “Ida” (Best Foreign Language Film in 2015), it stars European Shooting Star Jakub Gierszał (“Spoor”, “The Lure”) and one of the most highly acclaimed Polish actors Andrzej Chyra (“Katyn”, “In The Name Of”, “Land of Oblivion”). 4 LONG SYNOPSIS “Die and become!” - Goethe’s words must have been MICHAEL’s motto. He is 28 years old, a dynamic, successful, German lawyer working in a large corporate firm. Nothing in the way he behaves or talks, reveals traces of his other existence - Michael is a Polish immigrant. Every morning, before going to work, Michael becomes a German version of himself. Is it only an image he projects on the outside? He doesn’t want to be seen for what he left in Poland, but for what he achieved in Germany - being seen as German is regarded as confirmation and felt as a reward. Michael’s German boss FRANZ (34) is also his best friend. It looks like both components of Michael’s identity - inner and outer - are in balance. And he wants to keep it this way. He doesn’t disclose to ALINA (28), a Polish waitress who is clearly in love with him, that he is Polish like her. Michael leaves the stage of his German life to spend a weekend with a stranger - his Polish father STANISLAW (55) who Michael believed was dead. Speaking Polish, the language of childhood, opens an emotional territory for which Michael is not prepared. He tries to balance between being a child and a friend to Stanislaw, a stranger with a tumultuous past written into his face and the melancholy aura of an ageing punk rocker for whom there is really ‘no future’. Stanislaw is both able to move and confront Michael. After his departure on Monday morning, Michael returns to his well-balanced life carrying an emotional bomb inside. He learns that he will always belong to - and be seen as one of the immigrants. He can no longer be who he wanted to be and believed he was. He has to die and be reborn again. 5 DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT IMMIGRATION I left Poland looking for a chance to discover myself outside of the culture that had defined me. I wanted to belong to the West – both in terms of place and cultural tradition. The day I became a Dutch citizen was a moving and emotional experience for me. But I soon discovered that my Dutch passport has a symbolic value and no influence on how I’m being seen by others: as an immigrant. It doesn’t bother me since I discovered that being an immigrant is an existential state. I couldn’t find films that dealt with this aspect of immigration, as they tend to reflect more on hardship, rejection, poverty and represent the immigrant as a victim asking for empathy. The main character featured in BEYOND WORDS is a perfectly integrated immigrant. He sees the difference between himself and his German friend, but doesn’t want this difference to be seen; only if he finds it important. To me, it is a dream of integration realized. IDENTITY A Dutch citizen for more than 20 years, I’m described by the press in Holland as ‘Polish-Dutch’, ‘Dutch with Polish origins’, allochtone (as opposed to autochtone), bi-cultural. Recently, I read that I’m a Polish filmmaker based in Amsterdam. The moment when both inner and outer components of my identity came together was in 2009 when I was named one of ‘10 Amsterdammers of The Year’, thanks to the success of my first feature film, NOTHING PERSONAL. I wrote my speech in English, the language I use to write screenplays, and rehearsed in Dutch. When asked if I’m more Dutch than Polish, I never know if the question concerns both components of my identity. It seems that there is confusion about the outer one. The inner one is deeply personal: both countries reside in me to the extent of how both cultures formed me as a person. POLAND / GERMANY Michael’s father, who lived in Poland during Communism, must have been exposed to propaganda via countless TV series and films about WWII which, in addition to praising Polish heroism, were also reinforcing the image of the Germans as an enemy. Growing up in the 1980s, I associated Berlin with freedom. It was a tiny fragment of the West that was accessible without a visa. I could fancy myself for a moment to be a Western European, living a life free of politics and being able to buy any music or book I wanted. After the fall of Communism, Poland started to be seen in another context, as a post-colonial country and a periphery of the West. No wonder then that the highly ambitious Michael chose the centre, the culture stronger than his own. But during the last 25 years, Poland has changed from a pro-European country to one with exploding nationalist sentiments. The old Polish/German feud is brought back again. Nowadays, someone like Michael might even be considered unpatriotic. 6 RACISM Living in Charlottenburg (Berlin’s posh neighbourhood, populated by the upper-middle class), Michael may have never visited Neukolln (a multicultural enclave populated largely by immigrants). The dual aspect of his identity becomes schizophrenic when Michael realizes he is seen as belonging to a group he doesn’t feel – or want to – belong to. Like the African poet in the first scene of the film, Michael also wants to be a free man with a right to choose a culture other than his own. But the poet also evokes Michael’s dark side, confronting him rather than evoking empathy. Michael feels that he has been working for the same rights that the poet simply demands for. Instead of feeling empathetic to another human being like him, Michael only feels envy and refuses to help the poet. It’s a tragic flaw of his character that makes the first scene the beginning of his downfall. MASCULINITY Men don’t hide emotions but control them. As a woman, I’m allowed to express my emotions; it’s even expected of me to be empathetic. Michael was raised by a mother and found his male role model in his boss, not much older than himself, but higher in rank, someone to look up to, but also to compete against. Michael’s father arrives as an empty symbol of masculinity based on age and tradition. But Michael is bound to ask him the most important question of his life: how much of me come from you? The answer Michael hears satisfies both the narcissist and the child in him. When his father refuses to play the role of a father and becomes painfully human, he is expected to show empathy and love. But Michael is not that much different from his father who shows empathy, but doesn’t take responsibility for it. His father’s departure leaves Michael in an emotional turmoil between an unloved child and angry young man. WOMAN The only woman featured in the film – the Polish waitress Alina – changes during the course of the weekend from an object of Michael’s dreams to an immigrant like him, the only difference between them being their social status. After his father leaves him behind, Michael cannot return to his life as a German, now that his Polish identity has been exposed to the girl. Only then does she become a real chance for him.