![]() The film will be available as a part of BFI Player subscription from 6 - 27 May. It is a bold statement that has courted debate about form, subject and truth with visuals that resonate, whatever your conclusions. Watch out for the pink bunny scene to test your reactions.ĭrawing comparisons with the French New Wave and the style of Terrence Malick, the film observes Warsaw on the brink of new futures, refraining from comment but triggering comparisons between contemporary and previous generations. The parties, their love life, the hedonism - what does it all add up to? Are there answers or just experiences? A month from now, he certainly won’t feel the physical damage he’s inflicted upon himself here, but one imagines as the decades pass, he’ll look back with longing on the euphoric feelings captured here.Īll These Sleepless Nights premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and opens on April 7, 2017.Pulsing with a raw energy (CARIBOU, Can’t Do Without You, throbbing in the background) All These Sleepless Nights garnered Michal Marczak the Best Director award for documentary at Sundance 2016 and success on the international festival circuit.Ĭonsciously blurring the lines between fiction and non-fiction the film’s immersive yet episodic structure lets us into the life of 20something good friends Krzysztof and Michal over one year as they roam night-time Warsaw. As we follow Kris’ self-absorbed journey, a memorable moment in which he dons a pink bunny suit and starts to think about those around him may seem foolish to an outsider, but it’s a leap ahead in his development. “All relationships start with injuries,” Kris says in early on in the film. In accentuating performance through movement, All These Sleepless Nights could be construed as a more polished Girl Walk // All Day, albeit with much more dialogue. One of the most interesting formal choices is a noticeable excursion into home video-esque footage for the film’s most intimate moments, as if we’re entering our protagonist’s mind for the the first time, separated from the glossy sheen that occupies the rest of life. Coupled with a near-constant soundtrack of the latest in electronic and pop (as well as a Polish version of Pocahontas‘ “Colors of the Wind”), one could mistake any scene from this as a music video, but as a whole it forms something cohesive. Using the combination of a Steadicam and computerized gimbal, Marczak floats in and out of crowded dance floors, house parties, lush gardens, and sun-kissed beaches, all in a way that would make Emmanuel Lubezki proud. ![]() Even with existential voice-over about the cumulative events in one’s life and drug-fueled talk of sex, partying, romance, and the future, it may eventually become rambling from a viewer’s perspective, but then again, one might have had these very same conversations as the sun comes up. One is occasionally reminded of the melodrama found within Gaspar Noé’s Love from last year - complete with cut-to-black fades, and ever-moving camera - but where that film felt artificial in its dialogue and performance, All These Sleepless Nights rarely loses its authenticity. 2016 - Sundance Film Festival - Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary - winner. ![]() Their relationship starts to flounder when Eva, Michal’s ex-girlfriend, re-enters their lives, this time finding a mutual attraction with Kris. Stream All These Sleepless Nights, watch trailers, see the cast. “Playing” themselves, they glide through a dark Warsaw, illuminated by street lamps and the strobing lights from whatever party they stumble across, fearing nothing, walking through the middle of traffic and touching the side of trains as they zoom across. The main through-line, if one can even qualify it as such, follows Kris, who recently broke up with his girlfriend, and Michal, a twenty-something pair eager to find nightly amusement and perhaps some greater significance in their repetitive lives. Blurring the line between documentary and fiction like few films before it, Michal Marczak‘s All These Sleepless Nights is a music-filled ode to the ever-shifting bliss and angst of youth set mostly in the wee hours of the day in Warsaw, Poland. Marczak himself, who also plays cinematographer, is wary to delineate the line between narrative and nonfiction, and part of the film’s joy is forgoing one’s grasp on this altering perspective, rather simply getting wrapped up in the immaculately-shot allure of its location. ![]()
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