War correspondent Witek is away most of the time, and Anka must endure the horrors of war from home. The testimonies Witek passes on to the world feed Anka’s solitude and the catastrophic visions that fill her uneasy mind. And, as it transpires, the border between reality and fantasy is extremely fragile. In her directorial debut actress Ewa Bukowska based her work on the autobiographical novel by Grażyna Jagielska, in the process adeptly avoiding the pitfalls of slavish film adaptations. The non-linear story, the visual quality of the image, and the character acting of Magdalena Popławska render 53 Wars an evocative psychological drama about experiencing war second-hand: we don’t have to be there for it to have a destructive influence on our lives.