By: Dara Sborea

For this week’s blog, I watched a Polish short comedy. I decided to specifically look for something from Poland because my best friend, Hanna, is from Poland. She came to the US when she was eleven years old. Over the twenty-three years that Hanna and I have been friends, we have often discussed our cultural differences and the different ways we view and experience the world. I was curious to see whether watching something from Poland would be familiar to me because of my relationship with my best friend, or if it would be different. I found it to be both.

Co roku, which means every year, is a story about a brother and sister who have a yearly visit with each other. The short stars Kaja Bien as sister Wiktoria and Miroslaw Kupiec as brother Jedrek.

This short, like many other European films I have seen, centers on the characters. The interaction between brother and sister fills almost the entire film. In fact, there is only two other brief encounters in the thirty minutes of this short film, once with a painter who visits the sister, Wictoria’s apartment, and once with police officers in a park, where we don’t even hear them speak.

In the film, Wiktoria lives in a high-rise apartment. This is different from my own experience in the US, as I have almost always lived in a house with a yard. I have traveled extensively in Europe and have only ever met one person who lived in a house and not in an apartment. Wiktoria’s brother Jedrek, who comes to visit her, does mention living in the country and having space for Wiktoria to live with him, but he doesn’t say whether he lives in an apartment or a house. The travel in this short is made exclusively by bus. Part of the film is dedicated to looking up the best bus route after Wiktoria and Jedrek have a disagreement over which route is best. We aren’t privy to which town or city the short takes place in, but it does not appear to be a large city based on the few outdoor shots we see. I don’t know of many smaller US cities or larger US towns that rely heavily on public transportation. Wiktoria cooks for her brother Jedrek a few times in the short. The food she cooks for him is simple, such as bread with butter and cheese. He does complain that he wanted cold cuts on his bread, not just cheese.

What I loved most while watching this short film was the interactions between brother and sister. It seems how brothers and sisters interact is universal. Over the thirty minutes of this short film, Wiktoria and Jedrek disagree, make up, get on each other’s nerves, try to make up for getting on each other’s nerves, nit pick about the way they each do things, laugh about the way each do things, reminisce over drinks about their shared history, and show how much they love each other. In the end, Wiktoria and Jedrek argue over a small issue, and after Jedrek leaves Wiktoria’s apartment to go home, he returns because he doesn’t want to end his visit on a bad note. This could be any of us leaving a family reunion or visit with a loved one.