I Am

An eleven-year-old boy runs away from an orphanage where both the other children and the adults in charge treat him as an outcast, and goes back to his home town. When his alcoholic mother, who had already abandoned him once, throws him out a second time, he makes a place for himself in an abandoned barge on the edge of town. The other children call him Kundel, mongrel. He is still an outcast, but on his own terms now, turning down both condescending offers of charity and the pressure of the local toughs. Along the way he makes one real friend, a girl from a well-off family who is an outcast inside her own house. Dorota Kędzierzawska directed, and the film draws its strength from Piotr Jagielski’s performance and Arthur Reinhart’s photography. It won prizes at festivals from Gdynia to Berlin.