CITIZEN

A satirical tour de force through sixty years of Polish history, as strolled and suffered through by an Everyman who only wants to live his life, but, alas, through all sorts of mishaps he keeps stumbling right smack into the middle of the chaos of politics. After a serious accident, Jan Bratek lies strapped to a hospital bed. Many excruciating memories, and even the rare occasional sweet one, float through the old man’s mind: trained as a teacher, he wanders through every conceivable profession – from manager of a folk band all the way to extra in historical films, from milkman to bureaucrat – experiencing Stalinism, Solidarność and martial law, the winds of change and democracy, all while trying to save face and find a tiny bit of happiness. Which he doesn’t succeed in doing particularly well. Jerzy Stuhr, long since an institution in Polish cinema, not only wrote and directed this autobiographically inspired story, he also plays old Bratek, while his son Maciej portrays him as a young man. His film is opulent and light-hearted, although it is anything but a glossing over of the reality of the times. Whether careers in the secret police, bigoted Catholicism or the ever-present anti-Semitism – Stuhr knows no mercy when it comes to holding a mirror up to Polish society.