POLSKA LOVE SERENADE

What happens if shortly before Christmas two utterly different people bump into each other in a lowlife dive somewhere in Polish no-man’s land? Anna, a loudmouthed Berlin girl with chronic financial problems, has driven over the border in her dilapidated Volkswagen Golf. She plans to fake an accident in order to milk her insurance company. Max, by contrast, is an arrogant young lawyer. His father dispatched him to Poland to investigate the chances of reclaiming the rightful ownership of a house that belonged to his grandfather.

Although the unlikely couple can hardly be said to take each other instantly, the chance meeting in the bar is the beginning of an odyssey through provincial Silesia. It is a trip neither of them will forget in a hurry, often resembling the proverbial journey that is more important than the destination. Travelling in Anna’s car (which the Poles politely decline to take off her hands), they meet up with all kinds of strange people, learn to appreciate Polish hospitality, “lose” the old wreck and are required – it almost goes without saying –to knock back no small quantity of vodka. By the journey’s end they have learnt a bit about German-Polish friendship, ditched a few stubborn prejudices, and have got a lot closer to each other at the same time.

HFF student Monika Anna Wojtyllo presents a zestful troupe of actors in a tongue-in-cheek, refreshingly non-pc winter’s tale that delights in poking fun at all the hackneyed notions and prejudices that persist on either side of the Oder river.