Filip
An unexpectedly sharp, jagged character study about a handsome young Polish Jew pretending to be French who works at a luxury hotel in Nazi-era Frankfurt as his carefully constructed and extravagant lifestyle gets turned upside-down by the thrust of history.
In its bold focus on sensual pleasures and quality of life amid barbarity, Filip breaks every film cliché about the Nazi era and the Holocaust. In a wartime Frankfurt where horrors and trauma don't exclude the ecstasies and intrigues of the young, Filip (Eryk Kulm), a waiter at the city's top hotel, is a clandestine Jewish refugee from the Warsaw Ghetto whose life depends on the ruse that he is French. For foreign workers in race-mad Germany, fraternizing with Aryan women is punishable by death—and confident, seductive Filip violates this prohibition repeatedly, passionately, and brazenly. Luxe lighting, expressive camerawork, and period-perfect costumes offer a bracing contrast with an unexpectedly sharp character study of a man caught between the quest for survival and the hunger for action, intimacy, and self. As the story darkens, the question grows more pressing—what is truly at stake for Filip: pleasure, survival, or revenge?
- Director: Michal Kwiecinski
- Principal Cast: Eryk Kulm, Victor Meutelet, Caroline Hartig, Zoe Straub, Sandra Drzymalska
- Country: Poland
- Year: 2022
- Running Time: 120 min.
- Producer: Krystyna Swieca, Patryk Peridis, Michal Kwiecinski
- Screenplay: Michal Kwiecinski, Michal Matejkiewicz
- Cinematographers: Michal Sobocinski
- Editors: Nikodem Chabior
- Music: Robot Koch
- Awards: Gdynia Film Festival 2022 (Best Cinematography)
- Filmography: Love is Everything (2018), Bodo (2017)
- Language: Polish, German, Yiddish, French
- Has Subtitles: Yes