The Producers

Director – Bartłomiej Żmuda
Bartłomiej Żmuda is a graduate from The National Film School in Lodz, Poland. He has won multiple awards for his student fiction movie “The Barbican”, including the Grand Prix in Tehran and Bucharest, Best European Talent Award at Interfilm film festival in Berlin, the Audience Award at Rio de Janeiro “Curta Cinema,” and more. His short documentary "Five Days of Fear” was selected by The New York Times for the award-winning series Op-Docs 2022. For his feature documentary, he won the M. Szumowski Award at the 62nd Krakow Film Festival, and the Journalists’ Award at the 41st Koszalin Debut Film Festival 2022.

Making The Film

When my father saw this movie, he said: Ok, I figured out it's a movie about you and me.

And he was right, although the film was not about us at all, because the protagonists of the documentary are completely different people. So what's it like? About us or not?

Then festival viewers started telling me that this film described their relationship with their fathers/mothers. With sons. I started to understand that this was just how it would be. "This will be a movie about us." No matter where we are standing on this rope taut between generations: whether we are a son/daughter misunderstood by the other side, or perhaps a father, mother, or grandmother.

But this turned out not to be the case. Due to the main topic of the film – which treads the borders of the 'other,' metaphysical world – this film turned out to show yet another conflict: the conflict between the sacred and the profane, between life and death.

And how is it possible that all this was dressed up in an 'adventure' road movie, which is also a tragicomedy?

To my pleasant surprise, festival audiences in various countries: Germany, Greece, India, Poland, the USA, etc., perceive this film similarly. And yet everyone (hopefully!) digs out of it their own, personal – sometimes cheering, sometimes perhaps saddening – 'gold.'

Bartłomiej Żmuda, Director