Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Thu 25 Oct only

Bartosz Konopka / Poland / 2011 / 87 min

Bartosz Konopka’s latest film, first shown in Poland last year, is the result of a six year journey for the director. Following the death of his father in 2005, Konopka experienced a range of emotions: shame, helplessness, grief, and of course, loss. Fear of Falling is a realisation of those feelings, an homage to his dad and a mighty search for closure and release. It follows Tomek (Marcin Dorociński) as he is reunited with his estranged father, Wojciech (Krzysztof Stroiński). But Wojciech’s unstable psychological condition forces Tomek to weigh up their relationship and establish how to reconnect with his father.

Konopka’s film is one of the few genuinely and wholly redemptive cinematic exploits. It carries a weightiness packed with themes of guilt, reflection and finality which pervade much of the story. Films that explore personal heartache are often impenetrable, inelegant, sometimes alienating, but Konopka’s is deeply involving and poetic, bearing its soul with each passing scene. Admittedly, this means it is occasionally over-contemplative, jumbling camera techniques from slow-motion to blurriness which annoyingly stylise the film; these are muted however by the sheer force of the storytelling, and Konopka has clearly refined and perfected the narrative. This has allowed him to author a frank investigation into universal but composite emotions, both sensitively handled and intelligently expressed.

Showing as part of Play Poland 2012.

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