Larp
2014 · 27m · Pologne
Directed by Kordian Kądziela
Genres: coming-of-age, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Sergiusz, 17, escapes his family's mockery and incomprehension by throwing himself into live-action role-playing games, caught between two worlds: the knightly battles in the forest and the reality signaled by a passing train.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone's going to see the LARP-as-escape angle and nod knowingly; what's actually subversive here is how Kądziela refuses to mock it, treats the fantasy world with the same tender weight as the real one—that refusal to wink is the real provocation.
The film sits thoughtfully in a lineage of European coming-of-age cinema that privileges mood and threshold moments over plot machinery, with the train whistle as a formally precise intrusion that recalls the best of Kieślowski's attention to ordinary rupture.
That single cut between the sword clash and the train passing—the way Kądziela lets the sound bleed across the edit rather than hard-cutting the worlds apart—tells you everything about how a 17-year-old's interior life actually works on a formal level.
Reviews
Auréolé du prix du meilleur court métrage européen par le jury Format Court à la trentième édition du festival du film court de Brest, en novembre denier, Larp de Kordian Kadziela est un court métrage d’école qui s’attache à dépeindre le désarroi prononcé qui sévit chez les adolescents. Sergiusz, 17