STRANGER

Ewa is pregnant. She is single, has a miserable job and does not want the child – but the money for the abortion vanishes after a junkie sits down next to her in the bus. The doctor refuses to treat her without payment. Standing desperately and perplexed in front of the window to the treatment-room, she witnesses another woman watching her child on the sonogram. “Your child can hear you,” the nurse says. Ewa is deeply impressed and begins to explain the world to her unborn child. She constantly talks to it and even plays music her father – with whom she feels secure – dearly loves. Her new girlfriend Ivonka, a prostitute, meanwhile seems to find happiness in the form of a man. And even Ewa herself now sees the world differently, especially since she has become friends with Michał – the thief from the bus. But the flowering bliss is fragile. Michał is a poor choice of a friend and Ewa can neither escape further strokes of fate, nor the fear that her child’s birth might be difficult. But with the growing child, her self-confidence grows, too – so strongly that she swears, wrongly, on the life of her child to help Ivonka. Małgorzata Szumowska illustrates the maturation process of a young woman with tranquil images; also soberly recounting how her homeland arrived at its present state.