SILENT LAND

Anna and Adam are a Polish dream couple: tall, athletic and blonde, the two have chosen to spend their holidays in a vacation home on a sunny Italian island. But there's trouble brewing in paradise. First the shutters squeak and the pool is out of order. Then when the Arab-speaking illegal worker sent to fix the latter dies, the two witness the fatal accident but fail to act, entangling themselves in their own lies in the aftermath. A destructive downward spiral is set in motion, gradually undermining their relationship and enabling the brutality of the world to penetrate the couple's bourgeoise refuge. In SILENT LAND, Aga Woszczyńska constructs an ostensibly perfect world, though her intensive imagery reveals the hideous superficial countenance of our entire society of affluence. In convincing performances, the two leads Agnieszka Żulewska and Dobromir Dymecki portray the frosty but prosperous couple in their rigidly structured holiday routine, where not even sex promises to provide emotional intimacy. Woszczyńska has succeeded in delivering a haunting feature-film debut that confronts the audience with itself and the question of whether we might also be looking away far too often from things that actually demand and deserve our undivided attention.