Facades
2020 · 10m
Directed by Gregory Alexander Foltynowicz
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Through the bonding of its protagonists and the elements of space, water and air, a young man's process of self-discovery becomes an almost otherworldly experience.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise reads like every sensitive-boy-finds-himself meditation, but Foltynowicz seems aware enough of the trap to actually burrow through it—the surrealism keeps it from settling into the expected beats, though I'm not entirely convinced the experiment lands.
A formally disciplined meditation on interiority that treats water, air, and negative space as compositional elements rather than mood props; the work sits comfortably in a lineage of European experimental coming-of-age cinema, with the control to earn its melancholy.
The decision to let the physical spaces breathe—to let bonding happen through spatial proximity and elemental framing rather than dialogue—is what separates this from being precious; that restraint, applied with precision across ten minutes, is what makes it work.
Reviews
What the film lacks in dialogues and a linear narration is compensated with music against a black-and-white setting. With its well-thought and executed themes of minimalism, use of monochromatic colour palette and props, it brings forward the possibility of experimental retelling of complex issues in a much simpler manner.