Leave No Traces

Warsaw, 1983. Grzegorz Przemyk, nineteen, is detained by the police on the day he passes his final school exams and beaten to death at the station. One friend was with him: Jurek Popiel, the only witness. From then on the state directs all its resources at one objective: destroying Jurek's testimony. Jan P. Matuszyński directs, from Cezary Łazarewicz's book of reportage. The case is real and among the best known of the martial law period in Poland. Przemyk's mother, Barbara Sadowska, was a dissident poet; her son's death and the investigation that followed became a plain record of how the regime used its courts, its press and its witnesses. The film's interest is not the killing but the aftermath. Most of the narrative takes place in statements, false witnesses, pressure applied to the family, and the courtroom. The state does not conceal the crime; it makes the crime unprovable. It runs over two and a half hours and uses that length deliberately: the exhaustion of the process is part of the story. It was Poland's Oscar submission for 2022 and competed at Venice. Who it is for: viewers interested in Eastern European history and political drama built on state violence. Who it is not for: it is long, the cast of names is large, and it is hard to follow without knowing the politics of the period.