The secret of the village

The secret of the village ( Pokłosie in VO ) is a Polish dramatic film of 2012 written and directed by Władysław Pasikowski . ¹ The plot is inspired by the massacre of Jedwabne committed by Polish collaborators of the locality with the complicity of the authorities of the III Reich in July of 1941 .

Argument

The film takes place in 2001 in the fictional town of Gurówka. Franciszek Kolina ( Ireneusz Czop ) returns to his native Poland after living in Chicago for twenty years. Once he gets home from his brother Józef ( Maciej Stuhr ) suffers harassment by their neighbors, who accuse him of taking the tombstones of the Jewish population was massacred after the Nazi invasion and which once served to pave the Roads, among which is an abandoned and in bad condition. ²

Józef himself explains that the motive that moves him to perform such a task is that the event does not fall into oblivion despite the opposition of the people. As the film progresses, both discover that during Nazism , the ancestors of the other citizens collaborated with the German army in the slaughter of the Jews residing then in the place being this the reason why both are persecuted. ³

Cast

• Ireneusz Czop is Franciszek Kalina
• Maciej Stuhr is Józef Kalina, brother of Franciszek
• Jerzy Radziwiłowicz is Rector
• Zuzana Fialová is Justyna, the granddaughter of Sudecki
• Andrzej Mastalerz is Janusz Pawlak
• Zbigniew Zamachowski is Sgt. Włodzimierz Nowak
• Danuta Szaflarska is Herbolaria

Production

At first the title of the film was Kaddish (prayer prayed by the Jewish community at funerals), ^{4 5} this production raised controversies in Poland. Pasikowsky was inspired by the 2000 publication of Jan T. Gross : Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, in which he delves into the pogrom of 1941, a year in which apparently the Gentile neighbors of the place murdered Hundreds of Jewish residents to stay with their lands. This version contradicts the “official history” in which Nazi Germany was responsible for such crimes. In Gross’s words, this “meant a pitcher of cold water” for Poles “accustomed” to seeing themselves as ” victims of World War II ” rather than executioners. ⁶

Several sectors of Polish nationalism accused Gross of “inciting hatred towards the Poles” and of “misrepresenting history”. However, some citizens were intrigued to know this part of the “black history” of their country, which included the filmmaker himself. ⁴ According to Pasikowsky “the film is not an adaptation of the book, which is documented in deeds. It was only the source of my knowledge.” ⁶

It was his first film after a sabbatical decade. ¹ Pasikowsky found it difficult to carry out his project for the controversial script as well as the reaction that could be produced in the Polish citizenship a subject, considered taboo. ⁴ After seven years, producer Dariusz Jabłoński received funding for the filming of the film. ⁶

Reception

In Poland

Both the film and Gross’s novel sparked controversy. However, Pasikowsky’s work was positively welcomed by the government and culture-related personalities. ⁶

On the contrary, indignation became evident among the nationalist sectors that boycotted the premiere in cinemas while also publishing extremely negative reviews via the internet. The conservative daily Gazeta Polska described the film as “detrimental to the image of Poland” and the weekly Wprost (centrist tendency ) launched a print run of Stuhr with a Star of David on the cover, it read: “Maciej Stuhr - You asked to be beaten? ” ^{6 7}

International

As for the international market, the criticisms were mostly positive. Since Rotten Tomatoes scored the film with a 79% rating out of a total of twenty-nine reviews with an average of 7.2 out of 10. ^{[ citation needed ]} In April 2014, Metacritic scored 62% of a total of twelve reviews. ^{Referring to Fig.}

Nominations

The film was awarded at several festivals, among which the Yad Vashem ‘s Film Festival in Jerusalem in 2013, ⁹ the Jan Karski of Film Festival San Francisco Hebrew in the same year. ¹⁰

Nationally he received the Critics’ Prize at the Gdynia Festival and two statuettes at the Polish Film Festival for Maciej Arthur (Best Actor) and Allan Starski (Best Production Designer). ^eleven

References