The Soil

In 2021, the border area between Poland and Belarus became a forbidden zone, three kilometers wide, where refugees found themselves brutally trapped. They had become the stakes in a political game: Belarus supposedly guaranteed free passage to the EU, but in Poland the refugees met with pushbacks, forcing them back across the border. Once in Belarus again, they were driven back towards Poland—a horrific stalemate in an inhospitable landscape of treacherous marshes.

Karolina Poryzała and Monika Kotecka follow the rise of a women’s amateur equestrian vaulting club, led by the energetic Natalia, who dreams of turning it into a professional national team. The camera fluidly captures the relationships between the riders, in a documentary melodrama that reveals the strength of the bonds that this adventure forges between these passionately anachronistic teenagers.

Eugeniusz Rudnik revolutionized the idea of music itself with a pair of scissors and a magnetic tape. As part of the legendary Experimental Studio of Polish Radio, he revealed hidden value in rough and rejected sounds long before the rise of the DJs. In an era of electronic music created in a workshop resembling a scientific lab, he composed music to reach and to portray other human beings. This movie is an attempt to hear the vision of his music.

Marek Hłasko, ”the Polish James Dean”, a writer and a reveler, comes to Israel in the late 1950s. This land and people become his inspiration, and at the same time a trap for him. He carefully observes immigrants who try to settle in a new place.

A shocking testimony to the events which occurred on the Polish-Belarusian border in 2021. Under the guise of a ‘forest trip’ activists venture into the Białowieża Primeval Forest to deliver necessary items to the refugees from the Middle East and Africa hiding there.

A reflection on tourism assembled out of amateur videos filmed by tourists during their trips.