Zmruz oczy
Poland,
2003, 87 min
Shown in 2004
CREDITS
- dir
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Andrzej Jakimowski
- prod
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Arkadiusz Artemjew, Tomasz Gassowski, Andrzej Jakimowski
- scr
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Andrzej Jakimowski
- cam
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Adam Bajerski, Pawel Smietanka
- editor
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Cezary Grzesiuk
- mus
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Tomasz Gassowski
- cast
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Zbigniew Zamachowski, Ola Prószynska, Malgorzata Foremniak, Andrzej Chyra, Andrzej Mastalerz
- source
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WORLD SALES ZAIR Ltd, Poleczki 20 E., 02-822 Warsaw, Poland. FAX: 48-22-643-8383. EMAIL: jakimowski@enenet.pl.
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COMMENTS
Skyy Prize contender. Andrzej Jakimowski in person.
OTHER
Tracking a few outcasts, malingerers and delinquents as they work hard at hardly working in the Polish countryside, Squint Your Eyes slyly raises important questions about parents and children, strivers and slackers, and how each define success and happiness. But, like much of the classic Eastern European humanistic cinema of the ’60s, it focuses its true aims on more important matters, like contemplating the perfection of a summer day. Zbigniew Zamachowski stars as Jasiek, a genial ex-teacher and philosopher who has left behind his urban life and its worries to become the custodian of an abandoned rural farm. His downtime days are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the ten-year-old firebrand Mala, his former student who’s run away from her uptight yuppie parents. More comfortable with Jasiek’s laid-back philosophies and the farm’s visiting cast of ex-cons, dimwitted poets and preteen hooligans than with her parent’s well-pressed outfits and buzzing cell phones, Mala sees no reason to ever go home, at least until her parents, the farm’s owners, and the police all arrive. Others come and go as well, often making more noise than sense, but the film’s revelations remain confidently fixated on Jasiek’s appealing calm, and towards a country sky more mesmerizing than words.
—Jason Sanders
FACTOID #68
Stanley Mosk, who later became a California state Supreme Court Justice, served as the general chairman at the 1967 Festival.
