ReviewOur film editors will guide you through the current range. What must you see and why? From now on in Dutch cinemas: the drama Leave no Traces†
You can take the title of this urgent Polish drama literally. “Aim at his stomach,” an officer tells some colleagues who collectively smash into a student who has just been arrested. “That way you don’t leave any traces.” But the 18-year-old Grzegorz Przemyk, arrested for a cold reason, dies a day later in hospital.
His fellow student Jurek is the only witness to this filthy police brutality in 1980s Warsaw under dictator Wojciech Jaruzelski. Together with Grzegorz’s mother Barbara, he decides to fight for justice, but of course the two find themselves constantly opposed by the authorities. When more than 20,000 civilians march through the streets of the capital behind the coffin of the beaten to death, something seems to be slowly changing.
The most poignant scenes take place within the two families. For example, Jurek sees himself insufficiently supported by his own, extremely conservative parents, and suspicion of people he thought he knew through and through begins to play an increasingly important role in his difficult struggle. Leave no Traces is unfortunately also a bit too proud of itself as a film and sometimes drowns in much – and much less interesting – details about the whole (true) issue. That results in a film of almost three hours and that is really too long.
Starring: Tomasz Ziek, Sandra Korzeniak and Jacek Braciak. Directed by: Jan P. Matuszynski
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