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Kontrewers

Berlinale Shorts 2026
© Zuza Banasińska
The film follows an encounter between the ghost of a possessed girl, trapped for centuries within a stone, and the director’s 102-year-old grandmother, confined to her living room and waiting for death. The ghost, tied to a Polish folktale about the mysterious Kontrewers stone, becomes drawn to the pious older woman, mistaking her for its long-lost mother. What begins as a haunting turns into a surreal and tender dialogue, where both parties transform the traces of repression and inheritance beyond bloodlines. Conjuring this encounter between themself, their grandmother and the haunted relic, the filmmaker interweaves archival, staged and documentary materials. The act of filming becomes a relational practice of witnessing: an attempt to let their grandmother’s presence, at the verge of death, leave a trace, entangled with all those whose care, trauma and survival she carries. Kontrewers thus reimagines possession as a non-linear mode of communication, as a negotiation of boundaries between self and other. What was once buried resurfaces in the vibrations between generations through the persistence of matter, bodies and gestures: the media through which memory insists on being felt.

Trailer/Film Excerpt

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by Zuza Banasińska (Director, Screenplay), Violeta Paez Armando (Screenplay)
with Barbara Ptaszyńska Netherlands / Poland / France 2026 Polish, English 21' Colour World premiere | Documentary form

With

  • Barbara Ptaszyńska

Crew

Director Zuza Banasińska
Screenplay Zuza Banasińska, Violeta Paez Armando
Cinematography Jakub Dylewski
Editing Zuza Banasińska
Music Constanza Castagnet
Sound Design Zuza Banasińska, Constanza Castagnet, Neval Tarim, Ahmet Türk
Producers Zuza Banasińska, Aleksandra Aleksander
Co-Producer Quentin Just

Produced by

ALE ALE

Warschau, Poland

Co-produced by

Vents Contraires

Paris, France

World Sales

Video Power

Maastricht, Netherlands

Photos

Zuza Banasińska

© Austin Sandhaus

The artist and filmmaker was born in Warsaw, Poland and is currently based in Amsterdam. They studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, the University of the Arts in Berlin and the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Their work has screened internationally at film festivals including Rotterdam, New York and Visions du Réel. Grandmamauntsistercat was selected for over 100 festivals including the Berlinale Forum Expanded in 2024 and won the Teddy Award for Best Short Film.

Filmography

2018 I Didn’t Go to Crimea and All I Got Was This Alien Message; short film 2021 The House That Shadows Built; short film 2024 Grandmamauntsistercat; short film, Berlinale 2024 2026 Kontrewers; short film, Berlinale 2026

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2026