Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, Cottbus 2026

The makers of this film do not make it easy for us to feel sympathy for the protagonist, Kasia. She first comes across to the viewer as a ‘person without qualities’ who tries to keep her head above water at the expense of others. However, she undergoes a development (metanoia) through which she reveals more of her inner self and wins the viewer’s sympathy. And so we, as an audience, are also changed by this film. Through a surprising plot twist, director Grzegorz Dębowski puts human relationships under a magnifying glass. In the midst of the hard struggle for a humane existence in the big city, we see signs of humanity, and there is light at the end of the tunnel – a tunnel that Kasia, admittedly, has not yet left when we bid her farewell in the final scene. But meanwhile Kasia has shown us that one can make choices for the better even in hopeless circumstances.