Black Thursday (Czarny czwartek)

A Nordfilm and Agenja SET production. (Worldwide sales: Kino Swiat, Warsaw.) Created by Kazimierz Beer, Miroslaw Piepka. Executive producer, Beer. Co-producers, Marian Bobrucki, Henryk Bobrucki. Directed by Antoni Krauze. Script, Michal S. Pruski, Miroslaw Piepka.With: Michal Kowalski, Marta Honzatko, Cezary Rybinski Marta Kalmus-Jankowka, Wojciech Pszoniak, Piotr Fronczewski, Witold Debicki, Piotr Garlicki.Veteran helmer Antoni Krauze's "Black Thursday" is really a potent docudrama re-enactment of the well known episode in Polish history: the violent shutdown of the 1970 shipyard workers' strike in Gdynia, which led to 18 deaths and 100s of injuries. While less than as electrifying because the similarly designed and performed "Bloody Sunday," will still be a creditable mixture of tense crowd moments, more intimate drama and archival footage illustrating a scenario quickly increasing toward disaster. Champion from the critics' primary competition prize at Montreal, pic will not be a simple commercial sell offshore but should attract some niche interest, specifically in the broadcast realm. Following a short prologue set on Christmas Eve 1969, the script advances forward nearly annually. The Drywa family -- devoted couple Bruno (Michal Kowalski) and Stefania (Marta Honzatko), plus their three youthful children -- has already established an excellent new decade to date, getting finally become from the waiting list and right into a new apartment complex with all of modern conveniences. The only real fly within the cream is really a drastic hike within the cost of already scarce food products, that the government deems essential but proles look for a severe difficulty. Pleading for wage boosts to satisfy inflation, the shipyard employees of leading Baltic port city Gdynia request a nearby political wonk to provide their strike official Communist Party recognition. But he's soon raked within the coals for your by greater-ups who, afraid one strike might trigger similar ones round the country, pronounce it "incompatible using the party line." They sack the reduced-finish politico, then submit the military with orders to prevent these counter-revolutionary "crooks" from protesting at all. An especially vile tactic fishing lures 100s of employees towards the shipyard using the false news their demands happen to be met and changes can resume. Once they -- including Bruno -- arrive, they are shot at and pummeled by military, police and militia. More bloodshed develops once the children march towards the city center bearing the dead. This harsh chapter triggered such common outrage that it's credited with playing a significant role within the Solidarity Movement's founding ten years later. Large-scale moments of stress and violence are vivid because of so many shootings, one may think your body count could have been even greater of computer was. Human interest rates are maintained via focus on several people, from the student passerby pulled into fatally abusive custody of the children towards the party chiefs who unwillingly bend towards the will from the shrillest ideologues included in this. Pic takes choose to observe that many military and police personnel were from the orders, but too fearful to disobey them. Ultimately, "Black Thursday" selects to concentrate an excessive amount of about the Dwyers as our primary identification point, letting Stefania's histrionic distress over her husband's disappearance dominate the final act. Though her travails, too, are fact-based, they turn the pic inside a more conventional narrative direction compared to earlier, wider-canvas progress intercutting staged and archival materials. It does not help that Honzatko's turn is not the film's most powerful. Otherwise, perfs are solid, much like pacing and technical contributions. The somber palette of Jacek Petrycki's lensing sets the tenor for appropriately gritty design work, while Michal Lorenc's string-driven score performs exceptionally well with furious cello passages throughout moments of mass chaos.Camera (color), Jacek Petrycki editor, Rafal Listopad music, Michal Lorenc production designer, Zbigniew Dalecki costume designer, Anna Grabowska seem, Miroslaw Makowski casting, Krauze, Bartosz Paduch, Patrycia Krauze. Examined at Montreal World Film Festival (competing), August. 22, 2011. Running time: 105 MIN. Contact the range newsroom at news@variety.com