Bedrock

On a quiet, psychological journey through today’s Poland, Bedrock captures the lived realities of people whose homes are on Holocaust sites. This observational documentary takes the audience through landscapes in which traces of violence are intricately woven into the fabric of everyday life. Through a series of intimate vignettes, the film explores these shadows of the past: a little girl visits her friend in a psychiatric hospital that once served as a concentration camp; a Polish Jew undertakes the Sisyphean task of recovering and preserving the scattered remains of countless Jewish victims from across the country; a Catholic family debates Polish complicity in a wartime pogrom as their town prepares for its annual commemoration. Meanwhile, football fans in the village of Birkenau celebrate their local team’s victory. As the protagonists navigate the complex terrain of memory, responsibility and trauma in their daily routines, the film captures the unsettling contradictions with which people can learn to live. The echoes of a violent past reverberate in a dystopian present.