Hear My Cry

  • 46'
  • Poland
  • 1991

The startling story of Ryszard Siwiec, a man who, on a Polish national holiday in September 1968, immolated himself in front of thousands of people in a stadium in Warsaw. Drygas’s insightful film reflects on the rupture between official record and human history, the impossibility of absolute truth, and the malleable nature of collective memory.

The theme of revisionist history is prefigured in the film’s opening shot, a wordless sequence of uniformed officers taking turns in confiscating documents from a private residence to be destroyed on a bonfire. Cutting to a records clerk unlocking a remote storage room in order to retrieve incomplete archived reports on the investigation into Siwiec’s self-immolation – the dossier containing only a related citation for distributing flyers containing 'false information'. The juxtaposition between the labyrinthine odyssey through locked vaults and the retrieval of Siwiec’s sanitised files becomes a metaphor for an suppressed Cold War history.

Director
Maciej Drygas
Country of production
Poland
Year
1991
Festival Edition
IFFR 2019
Length
46'
Medium
35mm
Original title
Usłyszcie mój krzyk
Language
Polish
Production Company
Studio Filmowe Logos
Sales
Wytwórnia Filmów Oświatowych
Screenplay
Maciej Drygas
Cinematography
Stanislaw Sliskowski
Editor
Dorota Wardeszkiewicz
Sound Design
Andrzej Zabicki
Music
Anna Izykowska-Mironowicz
Cast
Ryszard Siwiec, Maria Siwiec, Innocenta Siwiec, Elzbieta Siwiec, Wit Siwiec, Adam Siwiec, Mariusz Siwiec
Director
Maciej Drygas
Country of production
Poland
Year
1991
Festival Edition
IFFR 2019
Length
46'
Medium
35mm
Original title
Usłyszcie mój krzyk
Language
Polish
Production Company
Studio Filmowe Logos
Sales
Wytwórnia Filmów Oświatowych
Screenplay
Maciej Drygas
Cinematography
Stanislaw Sliskowski
Editor
Dorota Wardeszkiewicz
Sound Design
Andrzej Zabicki
Music
Anna Izykowska-Mironowicz
Cast
Ryszard Siwiec, Maria Siwiec, Innocenta Siwiec, Elzbieta Siwiec, Wit Siwiec, Adam Siwiec, Mariusz Siwiec