Ode to Joy

This film is the joint début of three students at the Lodz film school. The young directors give their personal visions of contemporary Polish reality in three different stories. The binding factor is the need to express themselves in favour of their generation - with all its own problems and values - and against the established order. The film is made up of three parts: Silesia (Anna Kazejak-Dawid), Warsaw (Jan Komasa) and Pomerania (Maciej Migas). These stories are about three significant problems for Poland and other post-Communist countries: The exodus of the young generation, who are often also the intellectual elite of the country. Young people have more freedom than their parents ever had, but capitalism does not make their lives any easier. Their parents are either depressed and yearn for the 'good old days', or have turned into a hardened capitalists without character or conscience - the only value they know is money. Disillusioned young people seem to think of only one thing: emigrating. The makers have interwoven factual and fictional elements into their award-winning script, and invited three co-students to provide the camera work. The result is a coherent whole, made here in a fresh film language. Ode to Joy is strongly reminiscent of other `generational films' from the history of film, such as the Polish 'moral-anxiety' cinema or work by young makers from the Czechoslovak new wave. (LC)