Retrieval

Nineteen year old Wojtek lives in an impoverished Polish town. He is in love with an older woman who came from Ukraine and has no papers. To earn money he boxes in illegal matches and is noticed by a man running a security business. Accepting the man’s offer means joining a gang, but it may also be the way to get a residence permit for his girlfriend Katya. The film does not build the choice as a moral test; it shows which doors are closed. The account does not make the violence attractive and promises no rescue for the young man. The town itself draws the limits of the story. Antoni Pawlicki and Nataliya Vdovina appear in Slawomir Fabicki’s hundred and three minute Polish film, completed in 2006.