A wonderful example of a film about children that avoids traditional pitfalls of the genre, e.g. oversimplifying the characters or having them deliver messages in discrepancy with their age. Kedzierzawska masterfully directs children and coaxes highly natural performances from them, allowing them to build full-bodied characters with seemingly little effort. Another notable achievement is her approach to storytelling, substituting dialogue for images, where often deliberately over-esthetized cinematography allows the filmmaker to turn grim surroundings into almost a fairy-tale world (wouldn’t a child see the world in such way?). The result is a film about loneliness and the search for parental love told in ambiguous, complex scenes escaping easy interpretation. (Michał CHACI?SKI)