Zabij to i wyjedz z tego miasta

Kill It and Leave This Town
A moving, dreamlike journey into a bizarre fantasy world full of past emotions. For his first feature-length animated film, Mariusz Wilczyński has turned his attention to his own biography and bares all. Rummaging irreverently and uninhibitedly through his own personal and collective memory, he populates the streets, trams and shops of the industrial city of Lodz with characters, scraps of memory and catchy tunes that take us back to his childhood world of the 1960s and 1970s. Literary characters, comic book heroes, family members and friends wander anachronistically through this gloomy labyrinth, comforting the protagonist and defying darkness and oblivion. Wilczyński pushes the style and poetry of his shorter films, which oscillate between children’s drawings and Gothic aesthetics, to the extreme, testing the limits of what can be projected by using every imaginable nuance between grey and black. The cinema becomes a cave in which the audience can give free rein to their own memories, too, and face them with wide open eyes.
by Mariusz Wilczyński
with Krystyna Janda, Andrzej Chyra, Maja Ostaszewska, Małgorzata Kożuchowska, Barbara Krafftówna, Anna Dymna, Marek Kondrat, Gustaw Holoubek, Irena Kwiatkowska, Andrzej Wajda, Daniel Olbrychski, Tomasz Stańko, Tadeusz Nalepa, Mariusz Wilczyński
Poland 2019 Polish 88’ Colour

With

  • Krystyna Janda (Janek's Mother)
  • Andrzej Chyra (Janek's Father)
  • Maja Ostaszewska (Janek)
  • Małgorzata Kożuchowska (Fishmonger’s Shop Assistant)
  • Barbara Krafftówna (Mariuszek's Mother, Old)
  • Anna Dymna (Mariuszek's Mother, Young)
  • Marek Kondrat (Mariuszek’s Father)
  • Gustaw Holoubek (Mariuszek's Alter Ego)
  • Irena Kwiatkowska (Old Woman on the Train)
  • Andrzej Wajda (Old Man on the Train)
  • Marek Kondrat (Old Man on the Train)
  • Daniel Olbrychski (Old Man on the Train – Behemot)
  • Tomasz Stańko (Conductor's Voice on the Train)
  • Tadeusz Nalepa (Tadziu)
  • Mariusz Wilczyński (Mariuszek)

Crew

Written and Directed by Mariusz Wilczyński
Animation Mariusz Wilczyński, Agata Gorządek, Jakub Wroński, Marta Pajek, Marta Magnuska, Paweł Walicki, Agnieszka Borowa, Joanna Jasińska-Koronkiewicz, Kacper Czyczyło, Agnieszka Konarska, Anita Kwiatkowska- Naqvi, Natalia Durszewicz
Animation Supervisor Piotr Szczepanowicz
Editing Jarosław Barzan
Character Design Mariusz Wilczyński
Music Tadeusz Nalepa
Sound Franciszek Kozłowski
Set Design Mariusz Wilczyński
Art Director Mariusz Wilczyński
Producers Ewa Puszczyńska, Agnieszka Ścibior
Executive Producer Łucja Kędzior-Samodulska
Co-Producers Piotr Szczepanowicz, Jakub Karwowski, Grzegorz Wacławek, Krzysztof Hrycak, Łukasz Czyczyło, Jędrzej Sabliński, Rafał Golis, Julia Skorupska, Michał Herman, Radosław Drabik, Teresa Siwicka, Jacek Siwicki, Michał Chaciński
Co-Production National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute Warschau
Adam Mickiewicz Institute Warschau
EC1 Lodz - City of Culture Lodz
Letko Warschau
NoLabel Krakau
DI Factory Warschau
Gigant Films Warschau
A Polish Film Institute co-financed production

Produced by

Bombonierka

Mariusz Wilczyński

The filmmaker and professor of animation at the Lodz Film School in Poland has been creating animated auteur cinema for over twenty years as a self-taught artist. Retrospectives of his work have been presented at venues including MoMA in New York, the National Museum of Brazil, Tokyo International Forum and the National Museum in Warsaw. His animations have also screened at the National Gallery in London and in Berlinale Shorts. He has co-created live animation performances with symphony orchestras around the world. He worked on Zabij to i wyjedz z tego miasta (Kill It and Leave This Town) for eleven years.

Filmography

1998 Allegro ma non troppo; short film · Czasy przeszły (Times Have Passed); short film 1999 Szop, szop, szop, szopę… (Chop, Chop, Chop, Chopin); short film · From the Green Hill; short film 2000 Mojej mamie i sobie (For My Mother and Me); short film · Wśród nocnej ciszy (In the Stillness of the Night); short film 2002 Śmierć na pięć (Death to Five); short film 2004 Niestety (Unfortunately); short film 2007 Kizi mizi; short film 2019 Zabij to i wyjedz z tego miasta (Kill It and Leave This Town)

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2020