Magnificent7 Belgrade 2022 Balcony Movie

This text is written by the festival directors of Magnificent7, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:

Poland 2021 
101 minutes 
director: Pawel Lozinski

The work of one of the most important European filmmakers, the masterful cinéma vérité as a direct embodiment of the legendary idea of the great documentary master Dziga Vertov – “life caught suddenly”. It won the Grand Prix of Semaine de la critique in Locarno and continued its journey to all leading festivals of the world.

Within each scene of the film, precisely and strictly defined by the author’s point of view, and in a poetic way imbued with fine melancholy, we observe the world placed in a very narrow frame. And that world is surprisingly complex and rich – ranging from Shakespeare’s line “All the world’s a stage” to the provocative statement, associated with Andy Warhol, made in a world that discovered wonders of film and television: “Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” Random passers-by, close and distant neighbors, the author’s wife, a man with no money, children and dog walkers, they all pass through this micro world – some indifferent and not looking back, without any awareness of the presence of the author on the balcony above, some involved in a shorter or longer dialogues, apparently simple, but actually layered and filled with a deep sense of the meaning of their existence caught in these moments of “movie glory”. In that narrow time frame, concentrated on destinies of people who emerge from nowhere and soon disappear from our view, we become aware of the phenomenon of time and change that define it. The film was shot in more than two years and, even when we meet some familiar faces again, everything before us is in a constant change as in all truly great films.

An amazing documentary manifesto by a great master of the art of conversation and of uncompromising face to face communication with life.