Kino Mania: Ojciec i syn (Father and Son) 2013

Few documentary makers today have managed to investigate their own family milieu with such detachment. The films of Marcel Łoziński and his son Paweł have the rare quality of looking simultaneously inward and outward.

Marcel especially has embarked on a number of documentary family films in the last decade. In 2013, they presented an ambitious two-handed project at the Krakow Film Festival. The Łozińskis each tailored their own documentaries using the same footage from a road trip to Paris, where Marcel spent his childhood. Paweł’s version, titled Ojciec i syn (Father and Son), is an intimate review of their relationship that is far from conciliatory.

It seems that the son has let some open wounds breath without attempting to wash their dirty linen in front of the camera. Marcel, who is certainly touchier than Paweł, mistakes his son’s remarks for resentment over the experimental education that he imparted to him. Despite their different reactions, the father and son are both aware that the path to mutual acceptance is full of thorns.

Thanks to the non-invasive camera work, the striking outspokenness and spontaneity of the dialogue are preserved throughout the movie. But what makes Łozińskis’ non-fiction diptych irresistibly alluring is the spirit of a road movie hovering on the background.