Polish film-maker Paweł Łoziński has curated this amusing, cumulatively melancholy documentary which he has shot from the first-floor balcony in his flat in the Saska Kępa district of Warsaw. Over a number of years, and with a microphone discreetly attached to the chainlink fence at street level, he simply calls down to people going past and asks them to stop and talk about something, anything.
There are a lot of dog-walkers and people with babies; most people smile or grimace politely and say they are not special enough to be featured in a film. A priest says he can’t talk because he is carrying the Holy Sacrament. Others obligingly talk: one woman sings a rather beautiful song, a man talks about being homeless, having just got out of prison. People confide their sadness at the loss of a loved one, though one woman sheepishly confesses her profound happiness that her abusive husband has died. A couple of tough-looking guys carrying the Polish flag talk about patriotism and attack “equal rights and faggotry”.
As the film progresses we see the same people making multiple appearances, and they too begin to open up. One man talks about his guilt at being a violent debt collector for criminals. Another woman finds the experience of speaking to Łoziński liberating: “I’m pleased I had the courage to speak to you at all.” For some, responding to Łoziński’s cheerfully naive questions about the meaning of life has clearly been the first time they have ever thought about it.
It’s an entertaining spectacle, though as with Dutch film-maker Guido Hendrikx’s A Man and a Camera there is something that is being held back from the audience. The final credits give a complete named list of all the passers-by featured on camera – so at some stage the film-maker must have somehow asked them for their names, and perhaps asked them to sign a permission form; these are somewhat prosaic activities that can’t quite feature in this poetry of random encounters. It is a film with charm, though.
• The Balcony Movie is on True Story from 18 April.
