Facing Up

Colour, 35 mm
Poland, 2006, 90 min
IP – International premiere
Section: East of the West - Films in Competition

Synopsis

20-year-old Stan has got himself mixed up in a street gang. During the day he has a decent job working as a car mechanic, at night he escapes his joyless home environment, glad to get away from his drunk mother and little sister Ilonka. He gets up to all sorts of tricks, including robbery, and even participates in the gang rape of a young woman. On the run from one of his felonies, he injures his leg and needs treatment. In hospital he recognises his victim in the nurse looking after him. She is having an unsatisfactory affair with a doctor, who discourages her from notifying the police. Stan feels the need to make up for his actions, and he starts to take an interest in the young girl. She seems to want his attention, even though she is determined to follow her father to America. The gang, meanwhile, has no intention of letting Stan abandon his “duties”... The story is set in a dismal part of the city, whose devastation is projected into the souls of its inhabitants, ousted by social circumstances to the very periphery of life.

About the director

Marek Stacharski (b. 1960, Przemyśl) studied photography and television direction at PWSFTViT in Łodż and at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, United Kingdom. During the years 1987–2001 he worked as a reporter for Polish Television, for whom he made around 50 reports and documentary films. The low-budget film Facing Up is his feature film debut.