synopsis

THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS intimately explores ideas of female identity and womenhood. Set in Berlin and in a small town in Poland, DAYS takes place in the closed space of private homes and the oddly contained worlds of public spaces; Filmed in both black-and-white and colour, DAYS slips between documentary and dream-like narrative. What is the connection between these women? Are they alternate realities of the same life? Are they converging memories of an entire lifetime? Under the winter sky, they wonder what they might become and what might have become of them. Time passes ever slower.

director's statement

I was raised mainly by women. Women will be seen throughout the film. However, the film is not only about women. The femininity of the protagonists forms a backdrop to a story about existing in a state of alienation from oneself and from the world.

‘THE DAYS...’ arose out of a need to portray my life between Germany and Poland, bringing the intimate spaces and relationships of these two worlds together in cinema. It is the first attempt to make accessible to a viewer these two realities that coexist within my mind. The thought of how different realities and environments coexist simultaneously within the world, or even within society, has occupied me since childhood and can be seen in my first full-length feature film, 'Sieniawka', about a hospital for the nervously and mentally ill.

The cinematic representation of everyday life within ‘The Days...’ is not without dramatic or stylistic interference. By showing the everyday lives of the protagonists, the cinematic narrative is able to closely reflect our present. In a series of different life situations, the film depicts how our self-perception changes over time and how we experience the passing of time in youth and age.

All the women who appear in the film are, or have been at one point in my life, close to me. My relationship with each of them remains unknown to the viewer. It is my intention that, with this work, focus is placed on self-reflection, leading to a space where the protagonists are able to improvise before the camera. As with my previous work, I want to attain absolute closeness while remaining invisible, creating a fictional space and framework in which the viewer can imagine and create their own narrative. The viewer will be transported to the stage of everyday life and motivated to reflect upon themselves.

This procedure allows me to work both intuitively and improvisationally, with thoughts, ideas, and themes originating organically in the moment.

I believe in a form of discursive filmmaking, a method that closely follows life and, by doing so, is able to show the theatricality of the everyday.

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