All These Sleepless Nights

Director Michal Marczak tests the limits of the documentary in this story about two students on the verge of adulthood: it’s never entirely clear whether events have been staged for the camera or actually happened. The style changes abruptly from one scene to another – one moment it’s narrative, and the next more cinema verité. Conversations shift discreetly into voice-over. The protagonists are sometimes so uninhibitedly frenetic and ignore the camera so completely that they might be professional actors. Marczak ran into Krysztof and Michal at a house party in Warsaw. After three months of intensive contact, he started filming them and continued for a year and a half. He recorded the lives of two young men for whom the night is never over. They smoke, do drugs, hit on girls and break the world record for mindless chatter. They are true to life but stereotypes at the same time, in a coming-of-age film set against the backdrop of hip Warsaw nightlife.