Johnnie Waterman

A wandering minstrel finds a mare that has been mistreated and left to die; he buries the animal and lays a curse on the village responsible. In that village lives Jańcio, a man who loves life and his young wife Weronka and philosophises to himself. Soon after she conceives the child they had wanted for years, Jańcio discovers a power he never suspected in himself: he believes he can heal people and, above all, command water. He leaves his pregnant wife and sets out to see the world, promising to be back before the birth. Jan Jakub Kolski wrote and directed, and the film is treated as a founding example of the magical realist strain in Polish cinema. Franciszek Pieczka carries the whole thing, and it played in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 1994.