Couple in a room smoking cigarettes
2020 · 11m · Poland / Belgium
Directed by Katarzyna Gondek
Genres: documentary, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal, tender
A wordless observational documentary following an elderly Polish couple, Jadzia and Wiesio, through a single day in their small apartment — their love expressed entirely through shared rituals of smoking, cooking, humming, and quiet cohabitation.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Shot with a deliberately broken lens, hyperamplified snoring and ash crackle, wordless old Polish couple just existing. The anti-romance romance, this is the play.
Gondek's deliberately broken lens and hyperamplified mundane sound produce exactly the kind of textural documentary I find programmable — long-term love rendered as habit, in the lineage of Manakamana and Honeymoon. The wordless commitment is total.
Short of the Week feature confirms the experimental-documentary frame, though I'm only seeing a 0:30 trailer on YouTube — the broken-lens-as-haze claim and hyperamplified mundane sound design are the kind of formal choices that need the full piece to land. The premise alone — wordless love-as-habit — is a Zoe-shaped object.
Reviews
Love looks a bit different for a chain-smoking couple in a small apartment.
A film about love preserved in smoke — shot with tons of nicotine and a broken lens.
Festivals
- Sarajevo Film Festival 2021