Janusz Majewski certainly loves to play hopscotch with genres, a change of style and atmosphere from film to film. And yet, it’s difficult to miss his penchant for crime movies: his splendid second feature, The Criminal Who Stole a Crime (1969), and his true crime masterpiece, The Gorgon Case (1977), to name a few. Black Mercedes fits right in with this pattern, as well as with Majewski’s interest in the past, where the majority of his features are set.
The year is 1942 and protagonist Rafał Król, quite the Majewskian anti-hero, serves as an investigator for the Polnische Polizei im Generalgouvernement (the so-called Blue Police) while maintaining his underground contacts. The place is Warsaw, the crime is murder, the victim… and here things get murky pronto. Once Król starts digging into the victim’s past, it becomes clear that she was quite different from how she appeared, and what her husband says she was.
Film details
- Country of production
- Poland
- Year
- 2019
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2020
- Length
- 123"
- Medium/Format
- DCP
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