I'm a Killer

Written and directed by Maciej Pieprzyca, this Polish film draws on a 1970s serial killer case known as the Silesian Vampire. A young lieutenant is put in charge of a stalled investigation into a series of murders of women and will do anything to seize the chance of a lifetime. Under pressure he settles on a laborer as his suspect and pursues a conviction despite dubious evidence, and the man is executed. The film changes the names and does not recount the real case literally, constructing a variation on it instead. In the actual case, Zdzislaw Marchwicki was convicted of a series of murders committed between 1964 and 1970 and hanged in 1977, but he never confessed, the identification rested largely on profile matching, and the trial was held in a factory club open to the public. His guilt has been disputed ever since, with many researchers asking whether he was the killer or a scapegoat. The most striking piece of background is the director himself: Pieprzyca made a documentary about the same case in 1998 and gave this film the same title, returning to the material years later in fiction. It won the Silver Lions and Best Screenplay at Gdynia and Best Director in Shanghai. Who it's for: Fans of Eastern European crime drama about miscarriage of justice and institutional pressure. Who it's not for: Not for viewers wanting a procedural that settles who the killer was, since the film's entire tension comes from that uncertainty.