Tricks

This second feature film by Andrzej Jakimowski was, according to his own words, slightly autobiographically inspired. It’s about an older sister and her small brother in search of their father, as well as about their everyday life in a small Polish town. It is a warm summer in the Polish province. Elka and her brother Stefek live with their mother. The two hang out at the local train station when Elka all of a sudden points at a man and proclaims him to be their father. From then on, Stefek tries all the tricks that his older sister has taught him until now, to get the much missed father back home. Elka, on the other hand, tries to fulfil her own desires and dreams. She has already entered adult life and tries to keep up with the contemporary speed of life, trying to climb the social ladder. She applies for a better, modern job with a foreign corporation that would result in a higher income as well.
This is a contemporary story, told in a magical-poetical, realistic style. It reflects on rural life in Poland that has not changed as radically as in the big cities and evokes nostalgia for the period of somewhere in the seventies. A warm and amusing story, seen through the eyes of the boy Stefek. (LC)