Summa

A young Belarusian artist leaves her husband behind in Minsk to visit her friend, the elderly painter Andrzej Strumillo, in his idyllic manor house in Poland. It’s a fairy-tale place, surrounded by marshland and a river. There are horses, for which the two artists share a passion, as well as dogs. It has been two years since her last visit. For her, the trip offers a welcome diversion from city life; for him, it’s a break from a lonely existence marked by old age: a curved spine, painful knees. “It’s sad life’s so short,” he says.

The artists talk about art and life, animals and trees, love and what they’ve been dreaming. The pleasant routine of drawing, talking, horse-riding and chores around the house is interrupted only by calls from the artist’s husband, who wants her to come home. But she wants to stay longer—she isn’t finished here yet. What she finds here is also what the calm pacing of this film and its carefully composed images offer us: space for contemplation.