2023, Germany, Poland
20′
DOP, director: Ewelina Rosińska

I read in the writings of one painter that, for him, the Polish landscape seems to constantly draw our gaze to the ground, making us look not over the horizon but under our feet, at the bones buried beneath each step. The film shifts between a portrait of my eighty year old grandparents and my view on the elements and imagery of the national-Catholic narrative in the Polish landscape. The title “Ashes by name is man” is borrowed from a church notice board in Nowa Grobla, in Roztocze. At the centre of my explorations is the rage of hills Roztocze, while Krakow and Lviv form the boundaries of the area in which I was shooting.