Director: URSZULA ANTONIAK
87 mins, 2017, Poland-Netherlands, 2017, Digital, Subtitled, Black and White.
This film screened on Friday 8th December 2017.
This film is F-Rated. Find out more here.
Director Urszula Antoniak’s work may be familiar to Irish audiences from her earlier film Nothing Personal (2009), in which a young woman retreats to Connemara.
In Beyond Words, Polish-born, Berlin-based lawyer Michael (Jakub Gierszał) has fully assimilated into German society; although he hasn’t fully disavowed his Polish heritage, it is something from which he keeps his distance. The sudden reappearance of the father he thought dead, a roaming musician with none of the trappings of success by which Michael defines himself, forces him to re-engage with his background.
Shot in luminous monochrome, Antoniak’s film is a richly layered exploration of the migrant experience, asking questions about identities inherited and forged that will resonate with both Polish and Irish audiences alike.