20-10-2011
‘Hakawati’ in the Arab tradition is a master of storytelling, a brilliant raconteur who tells stories to everybody willing to listen. Hakawati played a very important role in the Arab culture: they gathered crowds of people eager to hear new fairy tales and strange stories. And now there are no real Hakawati left. In the contemporary world people have no time to listen to stories. The director sets off to search for true storytellers and finds the remnants of the tradition, which, unfortunately, are rather for camera‑holding tourists than local people.
time: 40′
year: 2011
Beginning of 1945, Upper Silesia, Poland. The last days of WW2. At the just liberated areas, the Communist Security Service eliminates its enemies under the pretext of punishing “national traitors.” It organizes a labour camp for Germans, Silesians and Poles, at the site of a former Nazi concentration camp, which is named “Zgoda” / “Reconciliation”. Franek, who is in love with a Polish prisoner Anna, joins the camp crew to rescue her. He doesn't know that one of the inmates is Erwin, his German friend, who, like himself, has also loved Anna for a long time. Franek joins Communists in the illusory hope of outsmarting the system.
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