MARZEC ʼ68

When Janik saves Hania from being hit by a car on the streets of nightly Warsaw, it is love at first sight. But it doesn’t look too good for her love. Hania’s father, a doctor,  was fired for flimsy reasons. He is Jewish and therefore victim of the antisemitic hate campaign that was carried out against “Zionism” and “Israeli imperialism” in almost all Eastern Bloc states in the course of the Six-Day War. Prime Minister Wladysław Gomułka also accuses the Jews remaining in the People's Republic of Poland of acting as agents for Israel and the West and thereby as the masterminds of the student protests that broke out following the cancellation of Adam Mickiewicz's theater classic “The Ancestral Celebration” (“Dziady”) because of “Anti-Soviet tendencies” in March 1968. As a high-ranking officer in the secret service, Janek’s father is significantly involved in the repression and violence against the demonstrators. From the perspective of a young couple in love, director Krzysztof Lang tells the story of how survivors of the Shoah and ghetto are forced to emigrate from their Polish homeland with their families. A film that describes young people's attitude towards life between parties, jazz, romanticism and a sense of new beginnings, which will then be destroyed by the arbitrariness of state power. Historical archive footage of Warsaw in 1968 complements this feature film, which unravels in the raw a dark chapter in recent Polish history.

Text: Kira Taszman

The film is shown with German and English subtitles - no German synchronized translation!