My Friend the Polish Girl

Katie, a young American documentary maker, casts a Polish woman as protagonist in her film about the life of migrants in London after the Brexit referendum. Her only instruction as director to Alicja is: "Act as if I’m not here."

That does not mean that Katie doesn’t intervene in her life – on the contrary. With confrontational questions, she tries to force intimacy and drives a wedge between Alicja and her boyfriend. Alicja earns a pittance as assistant in a cinema and is trying to get work as an actress while she becomes engrossed in the film; the camera has a magical attraction for her. This documentary soon becomes the report of a questionable game in which the two women challenge each other.

In a powerful and fresh visual language that combines cinéma vérité with drawn animation and style elements from vlogs, this convincing feature debut provides a reflection on the rapacious relationship between filmmaker, subject and spectator.