A Bar at the Victoria Station

Piotr and Marek dream of earning a lot of money very quickly. But not in their native Poland, where they do not see a future because they have been unemployed for such a long time. Their dream is to operate a simple snack bar near a railway station in London, because, of course everybody has to eat and during rush-hour commuters will not be able to resist the smell of food. They take an English class, pack their things and leave for England – prepared to take on anything that is offered, as long as it pays. Upon arrival, they are told that they will first have to pay a big fee for required work permits. With a quick start in shady illegal circles, they hope to use their first money to allow them to switch to a legal job. But for two Poles who cannot even understand the words ‘Sorry, I don’t know’, it is not easy to start at the bottom of the social scale in class-bound England. They make their greatest profit in a phone booth, from which they try to arrange a job with mounting despair, the machine spits out a few coins when they beat it. ‘It was far too easy to enter this country’, the dominant Piotr sighs. ‘If only they had stopped us at the Immigration Office at the border, we wouldn’t have had to flounder so much’. Shot in direct cinema style.