Warsaw Pact Films present My Friend The Polish Girl, their debut fiction film that takes the form of a first-time filmmaker’s documentary. Following widespread acclaim and significant awards buzz from the festival circuit (Edinburgh Film Festival Best Feature Film nominee 2018), the film will be released in the UK on Friday 19th July in selected cinemas nationwide.
My Friend The Polish Girl watches as an experimental documentary told through the eyes (and lens) of amateur filmmaker Katie (Emma Friedman-Cohen): an American rich kid following Alicja (Aneta Piotrowska), an erratic unemployed Polish actress.
Set in a post-Brexit-vote London, Katie’s colonising, disruptive presence in Alicja’s life mirrors the treatment of migrants in the UK: welcomed, used then discarded. A raw, sexual, and visually brash film exploring the abusive power and control over someone’s intimacy.
Written and directed by duo Ewa Banaszkiewicz and Mateusz Dymek (Warsaw Pact Films), My Friend The Polish Girl is their feature film debut. Thier work revolves around fundamental ethical questions related to films and the privileged position of those who make them.
Bringing to life a powerful and fresh visual language that combines drawn animation and style elements from vlogs, this convincing feature debut provides a reflection on the rapacious relationship between filmmaker, subject and spectator. The feature borrows from cinéma vérité and video bloggers to create a rare naturalism in style and performance.
Ewa Banaszkiewicz and Mateusz Dymek said: “My Friend The Polish Girl is seemingly a documentary about a damaged actress living in London (Alicja) but is also a critique of the documentarian filiming her (Katie). We wanted to communicate an emotional story of two dysfunctional women struggling to find intimacy. We wanted to create a film about the vanity of an artist and her failure to fully explore the human psyche.”
The film has played at various film festivals worldwide and has been nominated for Best Feature Film at Edinburgh Film Festival (2018), Best First Film nominee at Rotterdam International Film Festival (2018), International Competition nominee New Horizons International Film Festival, Poland (2018) and Golden Claw nominee at Polish Fim Festival (2018).
My Friend The Polish Girl will be released by Republic Films Distribution in selected cinemas in the UK from Friday 19th July.