Cinema Wolność (= Liberty) is a rather ordinary movie hall where unremarkable movies like Jutrzenka get shown. But one fine day, something quite out of the ordinary happens during just another screening of Jutrzenka: the film changes – the actors stop saying their lines, start to chat with each other, to soon involve the theatre’s audience as well. What the…?! Word gets out of the premises. The authorities get informed, and soon send the man who should be able to deal with this most irregular occurrence: the censor, he being the person who knows best what every film is officially supposed to look and sound like. Rabkiewicz, the functionary in question, though, is quite tired from too many years of service for a system he finds ever dodgier, while it being the system that is it is thus the system that needs to be serviced. Really? The actors of Jutrzenka have other ideas about the way things should go on, and they don’t mind telling them to their audience in general and Rabkiewicz in particular…
Very much a film of its period, having been made literally during the collapse of People’s Poland, to be released nine months into the nation’s post-state socialist old-new existence. Its lessons, though, still hold…
Olaf Möller