Case Unknown (original ENEN)

Director - Feliks Falk
Script: - Feliks Falk with the assistance of Agnieszka Holland)
Cinematographer - Arkadiusz Tomiak
Music - Bartlomiej Gliniak
Art Manager: Teresa Gruber
Costumes - Małgorzata Obłoza
Editing: Krzysztof Szpetmański
Producer - Włodzimierz Niderhaus
Production company - Documentary and Feature Film Production Company (WFDiF)
Production Manager: Paweł Mantorski
Co-production - Monolith Films
Co-financing - Polish Film Institute
Distributor - Monolith Film

Cast: Borys Szyc, Grzegorz Wolf, Magdalena Walach, Ewa Ziętek, Krzysztof Stroinski, Marian Opania, Elzbieta Karkoszka and others.

35 mm, 1:1,85, Colour, Dolby Stereo, released on 4th September 2009
100 minutes - in Polish with English Subtitles

About the film
The year is 1997 and the big flood is approaching Wrocław. As a psychiatric hospital is being evacuated, a young doctor Konstanty (Kostek) Gordon comes across a mysterious patient, Paweł Płocki, whose name does not appear in hospital files. Intrigued, Kostek tries to use a therapy - to little enthusiasm from his superiors and colleagues. Establishing the inmate's identity proves next to impossible, but Kostek does not lose hope and brings the patient to his house despite the hospital rules and his family's protest. The favourable impact of the therapy encourages Kostek to intensify his efforts and he manages to find the psychiatrist who accepted Płocki into the hospital twenty years before. The psychiatrist's is evasive, but, pressed by Kostek, divulges the horrible circumstances of that event. Has the young doctor woken up the devil while helping the soul which got lost in the bureaucratic machine? Feliks Falk, once a leading representative of the "cinema of moral concern", the director of "Wodzirej / Top Dog" and "Komornik / The Collector" and winner of the Złote Lwy / Golden Lions Grand Prix at the 2005 Gdynia Polish Film Festival and the Orzeł / Eagle Polish Film Award for Directing, was inspired by a true story which appeared in the press. However, Falk is more interested in mechanisms than facts, and although the shocking truth discovered by the young psychiatrist dates back to the times before the breakthrough year of 1980, its mechanism can be set in motion nowadays, too. "Enen / Case Unknown" is a warning against it - and more, for there a number of references to the acclaimed "One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest" and its key characters: McMurphy and, even more so, Chief Bromden. Like in Ken Kesey's novel and Milos Forman's film, it is the relationships between the characters which are essential. Despite the thriller-like plot, "Enen" reverberates with the echoes of the "cinema of moral concern." The young psychiatrist does his job with genuine passion and total devotion to his patients, and to explain the mysterious case of Paweł Płocki he will break the law and jeopardize not only his career but also his family life and the safety of his family. Does he, however, realize how dangerous the game is? Who the catatonic whom he is trying to wake up will turn out to be? And, regardless of the circumstances which become revealed, are such great risks worth taking? During the film's promotional campaign, Falk confided: "Some have tried to persuade me to dot all the i's and say that if the patient's could be woken up from his catatonic-like condition he would be a danger to the community. Or to have Kostek, once he discovers the truth, abandon the patient or keep him with himself, change his attitude to psychiatry or quit the job altogether. I, however, preferred to leave certain things unsaid. After all, a film is a conversation with the audience and it is them that I want to have the last say. ... The society feels uncomfortable about otherness; remember that the communist regime abused psychiatry - take the Soviet psychiatric wards and 'asymptomatic schizophrenia' which afflicted the dissidents. However, it has not ended with the demise of communism. ... While the historical context is important for structural reasons in 'Enen', its is not crucial. To me it served as a pretext to show the moral choices which people had to make before 1980 and the lessons which Kostek learns about people."

Screening times:

MELBOURNE - Sunday 5th of September 2010 at 1:00pm and 3:30pm
Only two screenings in Melbourne - Classic Cinema Elsternwick
Tickets available at Classic Cinema Elsternwick
9 Gordon Street Elsternwick - ph. 9523 9739
www.readingcinemas.com.au/cinemas/classic_elsternwick.asp

CANBERRA - Thursday 9th of September at 7:00pm
Only one screening in Canberra - National Gallery of Australia, Parkes Place - Parkes
Tickets - at the cinema before the screening.
Telephone booking: Puma Media - ph. 03 9523 0387

SYDNEY - Paddington - Saturday 11th of September at 5:00pm
Only one screening in Paddington at The Chauvel Cinema, cnr oxford & Oatley Road, Paddington
Tickets - at the cinema before the screening.
Telephone booking: Puma Media - ph. 03 9523 0387

Sydney - Reading Cinema Auburn - Sunday 12th of September at 3:00pm
Only one screening at theReading Cinema Auburn, 100 Parramatta Road, Auburn
Tickets available at the Reading Cinema Auburn
100 Parramatta Road, Auburn - ph. 9647 0900
www.readingcinemas.com.au/cinemas/auburn.asp

PERTH - Sunday 19th of September at 3:00pm
Only one screening in Perth - Reading Cinema Belmont - cnr Knutsford Avenue & Fulham Street, Belmont, WA 6105
Tickets available at the Reading Cinema Belmont
Cnr Knutsford Avenue &Fulham Street, Belmont - ph. 6272 9900
www.readingcinemas.com.au/cinemas/belmont.asp

ADELAIDE - Saturday 25th of September at 1:30pm
Only one screening in Adelaide - Chelsea Cinema, 275 Kensington Rd, Kensington Park
Tickets - at the cinema before the screening.
Telephone booking: Puma Media - ph. 03 9523 0387