The Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdynia has already had its first screenings. We watched, among others, Krzysztof Skonieczny’s “Wrooklyn Zoo” competing for the Golden Lion this year. Below you will find a fragment of our review by Jakub Demianczuk, and you can read the entire review on the film card AT THE LINK HERE.
Krzysztof Skonieczny himself told us not only about the film itself, but also a little about himself, his grandfathers and grandmothers, and a certain magical watch. Listen to the interview conducted by Łukasz Muszyński.
Krzysztof Skonieczny: It was the last moment to shoot this film
review of the film “Wrooklyn Zoo”, dir. Krzysztof Skonieczny
SK8 or Die!
author: Jakub Demianczuk
I hope that no one shapes their ideas about young people based on Polish films. The bar is set very low, and although it is slightly raised by films such as “Ostatni Komers” or series such as “Absolute Debutantes”, the screens are filled with a parade of greedy brats or licensed rebels. Fortunately, the characters of “Wrooklyn Zoo” are expressive, lively, unconventional – even if it is an equally distorted image, at least they stand out from the crowd.
Adam Kosa Kosiński (Mateusz Okuła), the self-proclaimed best skater in Wrocław, definitely wants to stand out. He has the nature of a punk rocker, improves his grades by having an affair with an attractive teacher, and dreams of winning the local skateboarding competition, because then he will get a chance to go to a tournament in Los Angeles. He is a free spirit, although deep in his heart he has not fully gotten over the tragic death of his parents. He is cared for by his grandfather Staszek (Jan Frycz), a gentleman who cares for the wound, but who is not entirely able – or perhaps not even willing – to control his grandson’s antics. Kosa skates with his friends, parties until he loses his strength, and from time to time gets into fights with a gang of skinheads. However, everything around him changes when he meets Roma Zora (Natalia Szmidt), a girl forced by her family into an arranged marriage. For love at first sight, Kosa will be willing to risk a lot.
“Wrooklyn Zoo” resembles the fantasy of a teenager entering adulthood: free from parental control, hitting on the prettiest girls at school, standing up for the weaker, able to turn his talent into a chance for a better future and will still be able to sacrifice each of these things for true love. All this gives the impression that the idea for the plot was written down by a teenager, Krzysztof Skonieczny, somewhere at the end of his Polish notebook in the late 1990s (it is probably not without reason that the beautiful teacher is played by Renata Dancewicz), but only the director, who was in his forties, had the talent and, above all, the opportunity to implement this concept. and enrich it with new, more serious threads. It starts like a variation on “Kids” by Harmony Korine, but ends like a tribute to Tony Gatlif, in the middle there are still cliches from skate films, coming of age, bandit cinema and, of course, “Romeo and Juliet” “, because every story about the love of two people from extremely different social groups will forever be doomed to comparisons with Shakespeare.
You can read the entire review of the film “Wrooklyn Zoo” on its card AT THE LINK HERE.
