WEISER
A man struggles to come to terms with a mystery that has haunted him throughout his adult life in this drama from Poland. In 1967, a 13-year-old boy named Dawid discovered a cache of explosives and began experimenting with them; one day, several of his friends saw Dawid wave to them shortly before a massive explosion went off near a railway tunnel, and no one ever saw the young man again. Thirty years later, one of Dawid's close friends, Pawel, returns to Poland for the first time in 11 years to visit Juliane, a woman he used to love. As Pawel returns home, he discovers his thoughts keeps drifting back to Dawid and what might have happened to him that day. Pawel keeps replaying the explosive incident in his mind, and goes so far as to track down Elka, Dawid's girlfriend, who was with him moments before the explosion, though then as now she refuses to talk about what happened. Pawel is unable to determine for sure just what happened or how Dawid died.
Release: 2001 (Denmark)
Duration: 95 minutes
Genre: Fiction feature
Spoken language: Polish
Director: Wojciech Marczewski
Screenplay: Tony Grisoni and Wojciech Marczewski
Cinematography: Krzysztof Ptak
Editor: Milenia Fiedler
Sound Design: Gabriel Hafner, Mariusz Kuczynski, François Musy and Joanna Napieralska
Composer: Zbigniew Preisner
Producers: Iwona Ziulkowska and Krzysztof Zanussi
Production Country: Poland
Production Company: Zespol Filmowy 'Tor'
Coproducers: Magic Hour Films, Telewizja Polska, HBO Polska, Softbank, Plus GSM, Studio A, Vega Film and Provobis Film
Produced with support from: Komitet Kinematografii, Agencja Produkcji Filmowej and Eurimages.
The film was nominated for the Golden Berlin Bear Award at the 2001 Berlin International Film Festival and at the 2002 Polish Film Awards in the categories Best Film, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director and Best Screenplay.
The fIlm won at the 2001 Polish Film Awards for Best Sound, at the 2001 Polish Film Festival for Best Editing and Best Sound and finally at the 2002 Polish Film Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Editing.