The track
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The track |
| Original title | Pokot |
| Country of production | Germany , Poland , Sweden , Slovakia , Czech Republic |
| original language | Polish |
| Publishing year | 2017 |
| length | 129 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Agnieszka Holland , Kasia Adamik |
| script | Agnieszka Holland, Olga Tokarczuk |
| production | Krzysztof Zanussi |
| music | Antoni Łazarkiewicz |
| camera |
Jolanta Dylewska , Rafał Paradowski |
| cut | Pavel Hrdlička |
| occupation | |
| |
The track (original title Pokot ; international title Spoor ) is an ecothriller by Agnieszka Holland , which premiered on February 12, 2017 in the competition at the Berlinale . The film adaptation of the novel The Song of the Bats by Olga Tokarczuk won the Alfred Bauer Prize (Silver Bear) as a feature film that opens up new perspectives in the art of film. Pokot was nominated by Poland for the 2018 Academy Awards in the category of Best Foreign Language Film . The film was released in German cinemas on January 4, 2018.
action
The solitary English teacher Janina Duszejko lives with her two dogs Lea and Bialka in a remote mountain village on the Polish-Czech border, until they disappear one day. Life in the village is determined by men, including Mayor Wolsky, Pastor Szelest and fox breeder and brothel operator Wnętrzak, all of whom are passionate hunters. Is as a village known poachers found dead Duszejko finds the photo of the men of the village with a large in his hut hunting bag . Only at the end of the film do you find out that Duszejko's dogs are among them.
This resulted in gruesome murders of several men in the village. Traces of wild animals can be found near their corpses. While the police and the prosecutor Świerszczyński question the villagers and the seasons go by, Duszejko becomes friends with the saleswoman Dobra Nowina and the computer scientist Dyzio. Dobra Nowina is financially dependent on Wnętrzak to get custody of her little brother and the epileptic Dyzio works in the town house and translates poems by William Blake into Polish with Duszejko . A friendship develops with Duszejko's neighbor Matoga and on a hike she meets the Czech entomologist Boros Sznajder. She shares her love for nature with him and anger over its destruction by humans.
When Dobra Nowina was arrested for being the last to see the missing Wnętrzak alive, Duszejko fervently told the prosecutor of her conviction that the animals killed the hunters, just as animals have often fought for the suffering inflicted on people in human history would have avenged. She also explains to the police that the death of the men was predetermined by their astrological zodiac sign.
At the end of the summer Boros has to go back to the university in Olomouc and Matoga and Duszejko go to the costume ball of the local mushroom picking association. When Wolsky is found dead the next day, the police set their sights on Duszejko, whose anger over the sometimes illegal hunts of the men is well known.
On St. Hubertus Day , the village community gathers in the church, where the pastor celebrates the saint as the first ecologist and the hunters as protectors and caretakers of the forest animals. Duszejko jumps up in disbelief and disrupts the service so that she is thrown out of the church. On the forecourt, she watches a magpie that picks up a piece of glass and flies away with it - Duszejko seems to ask her to use it to set the church on fire. Flashbacks set in and show how Duszejko kills the corrupt village policeman and Wnętrzak each with a stone wrapped in a plastic bag. Duszejko drives home excitedly and tries to escape, but her car does not start. At the same time, Dobra Nowina and Dyzio recognize from the photos of the crime scenes to which Dyzio has access that Duszejko must have killed both men and Wolsky. On the way to Duszejko they see the church burning in the valley and learn that the pastor is dead.
Dobra Nowina, Dyzio, Matego and Duszejko flee from the police. The last shot shows the four with Boros and Dobre Nowina's brother happily together in a secluded house in the middle of sunlit nature and animals.
production
Literary template and staff
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The film is a European cooperation. Oscar-nominated Agnieszka Holland directed the film adaptation of the novel The Song of Bats by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk . Together with Tokarczuk, Holland adapted the novel for the film.
In a dpa interview on the occasion of the premiere of her film in the competition at the Berlinale 2017, Holland said: “In Poland - but not only - women of a certain age are invisible, non-existent and downright annoying. When a woman loses her sexual attractiveness, she becomes a nobody. People look at them but don't see them. But if she does something to get noticed, she arouses aggression. ”At the Berlinale press conference, Holland said:“ The film adaptation of this novel by Olga Tokarczuk was a stylistic challenge, perhaps also a technical challenge, because all of my previous films were each to assign to a specific genre. It was difficult here from the start. That also made it difficult to finance the film, because what should you tell people? Was it a psychodrama, a comedy, maybe a black comedy, a thriller, a fairy tale, all of these genres were mixed up here. [...] I wasn't sure whether I would manage it, whether my talent, my craft would be enough. So I tried to do something new for myself. ”When submitting applications to various subsidy funds and television stations, Holland described the film as an anarchist feminist ecothriller with elements of a black comedy. In the Berlinale program, the result is described as a daring mix of genres consisting of a comic detective story, an exciting eco-thriller and a feminist fairy tale. The dpa explains that Holland cleverly mixes the crime story based on the novel with topics such as emancipation, environmental and animal protection, but at the same time Die Spur is exciting entertainment with a bite and a surprising ending: “Holland's directorial work cannot be divided into a single genre - Insert the drawer. [...] And this mix is so well crafted and so finely spun dramaturgically that in the end the whole thing turned out to be a single-piece film. "
William Blake's poem The Mental Traveler takes a symbolic role in the plot. Olga Tokarczuk already used the English mystic in her novel to practice sharp criticism of civilization. The stars, admired by Janina Duszejko, also appear in the poem. It says: "The stars sun moon all shrink away / A desart vast without a bound / And nothing left to eat or drink / And a dark desart all around."
Cast and publication
Agnieszka Mandat took on the role of hermit and English teacher Janina Duszejko. Jakub Gierszał plays her former student Dyzio, Wiktor Zborowski plays her neighbor Matoga, Miroslav Krobot plays the Czech entomologist Boros, and Patricia Volny plays the young Dobra Nowina.
The film celebrated its premiere on February 12, 2017 as part of the Berlin Film Festival , where it was shown in the competition for the Golden Bear . The film was released in German cinemas on January 4, 2018.
reception
Age rating
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In Germany the film is FSK 12 . The statement of reasons for the release states: “The film focuses on its eccentric protagonist and the patriarchal and mafia- like rural milieu. A clear distinction is made between good and bad. Individual representations of the killing of humans and animals as well as sexual abuse can overwhelm children under the age of 12, but since the staging is always cautious, even 12-year-olds are able to put these scenes into context. The parable-like narrative style and the clear moral positioning of the story offer them enough opportunities to distance themselves. "
Reviews
Anke Westphal writes in the Berliner Zeitung : " You just can't get enough of Agnieszka Mandat's game."
In a film review by the dpa it was praised that the film, mixed as an “exciting eco-thriller, touching feminist drama and weird social satire with pitch-black humor”, was “so well crafted and so finely spun dramaturgically”, “that from the whole at the end of the day a film that looked like it was cast from one piece ".
The film service was not completely satisfied, awarded two out of five possible stars and assessed the work as an overall "indecisive mixture of homeland film, village crime, eco-thriller and contemporary diagnostic society portrait, which is also irritating because of its eccentric main character."
Awards (selection)
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In September 2017 it was announced that The Trail of Poland had been nominated as a nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category for the 2018 Academy Awards . The film also made it onto the shortlist for the European Film Awards 2017 .
Berlin International Film Festival 2017
- Nomination for Best Film for the Golden Bear (Agnieszka Holland)
- Awarded the Silver Bear (Alfred Bauer Prize) ( Kasia Adamik and Agnieszka Holland)
- Award for the best costume design ( Katarzyna Lewińska )
National Society of Film Critics Awards 2018
- Special citation for a film awaiting US distribution (Agnieszka Holland)
Polish Film Festival Gdynia 2017
- Nomination for Best Film for the Golden Lion (Kasia Adamik and Agnieszka Holland)
- Award for the best director (Kasia Adamik and Agnieszka Holland)
- Award for the best make-up ( Janusz Kaleja )
Web links
- The track in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The trace in the German dubbing files
- The track in the program of the Berlin Film Festival
Individual evidence
- ↑ Release certificate for Die Spur . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 174646 / K).
- ↑ Start dates Germany In: insidekino.com. Accessed December 31, 2017.
- ↑ Thomas Volkmann : The track In: programmkino.de. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
- ↑ a b c “Die Spur”: environmental thriller with a feminist touch dpa report, in: Focus Online, December 30, 2017.
- ↑ press release In: filmkinotext.de. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
- ↑ Pokot film data sheet In: berlinale.de. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
- ↑ Susanne Gottlieb: Gloomy Thriller in the Polish Forests In: Uncut , February 22, 2017.
- ↑ William Blake: The Mental Traveler (annotated) On: genius.com, accessed October 10, 2019.
- ↑ Start dates Germany In: insidekino.com. Accessed December 31, 2017.
- ↑ Reasons for approval for Die Spur In: Voluntary Self-Control of the Film Industry. Retrieved January 5, 2018.
- ↑ Anke Westphal: Berlinale competition 'Pokot' and 'Félicité' focus on strong women In: Berliner Zeitung, February 12, 2017.
- ↑ The Trace (2017). In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Literary portraits. Winter 2017: Olga Tokarczuk ( Memento from December 31, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) In: German Poland Institute. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
- ↑ Stewart Clarke: Poland Picks Agnieszka Holland's 'Spoor' as Its Foreign-Language Oscar Entry In: Variety , September 11, 2017.
- ^ Spoor (Pokot) - Poland's Oscar Candidate In: polishfilmfestival.net. Retrieved January 2, 2018.
- ↑ KATARZYNA LEWIŃSKA WINS EUROPEAN FILM AWARD • PISF. Polish Film Institute. In: Polish Film Institute. November 15, 2017, accessed October 10, 2019 .
- ↑ Hilary Lewis: 'Lady Bird' Named Best Picture by National Society of Film Critics In: The Hollywood Reporter , January 6, 2018.
- ↑ Nominacje do ZLOTYCH Lwów. O tytuł najlepszego polskiego filmu powalczą “Pokot”, “Sztuka kochania” and “Amok”. In: Newsweek Polska. February 17, 2018, accessed October 10, 2019 (Polish).