UŁASKAWIENIE

In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War the son of an ageing couple is shot dead by the communist secret police. The youngster fought on the side of the Home Army which, after the war, goes underground in order to put up resistance to communist rule. The parents resolve to transport their child's defiled corpse to their distant home-town and bury him there. Having placed his body in a coffin, they set off with a horse cart across a post-war landscape ruled by marauding soldiers, army units, fugitive former Nazi fighters and partisans. The journey sees the couple rekindle their love for one another in a world characterised by brute force.

Despite its seeming simplicity the film's narrative form draws heavily on magic realism, in turn characteristic of Jan Jakub Kolski's earlier works. In the process the tale evolves into a poignant metaphor on human dignity and the limits thereof. At the same time PARDON is a suspenseful “road movie”, set to a rough, lawless backdrop caught between war and peace in which survival takes priority above all else. KM