The Ugliest Car

"My car is as flexi as it is sexy," 70-year-old Bogdan Rozycki boasts of his 51-year-old Wartburg. This car is the proud winner of the accolade "ugliest car in Poland." Bogdan has filled a pretty impressive trophy cabinet thanks to his horrendous old jalopy. The fact that it still has its original paint says plenty about the vehicle’s state of decay. There are three crucifixes hanging from the rear-view mirror, and before Bogdan drives the car onto the highway he crosses himself three times—in the hope of warding off death on the road. And perhaps all this display of Catholic piety has helped: Bogdan’s elderly mother Kazimiera is always in the car’s passenger seat, and has managed to reach the ripe old age of 94 despite the death trap on wheels. One of the many trips they make is a journey into the past. This witty, at times tender observation of the everyday life of a mother and her son is occasionally punctured by the shadow of the war that marked so many lives. Including Kazimiera’s: as a young woman, she was forced to work in a Nazi camp.