Trailer for Communion.
Winner of Critics’ Week Grand Prize at Locarno Film Festival and nominated for Poland’s Oscars alongside fiction features, Communion is a delicate portrait of a family held together by a barely teenaged girl. Debut filmmaker Anna Zamecka follows 14-year-old Ola as she runs her household single-handedly. Seemingly abandoned by her wayward mother, Magda, Ola raises her younger autistic brother on her own despite the presence of their alcoholic and entirely ineffectual father. Cooking all their meals while keeping on top of her studies, Ola’s forced conversion from child to adult is almost complete. Her hardened veneer is betrayed only by a yearning for Magda to come home. She’s convinced if she can make her brother’s upcoming First Communion celebrations picture-perfect, she can woo her mother back and make her family fantasy come true. Superbly composed and deeply moving, Communion’s many strengths are as admirable as its young protagonist.