The Pawnshop

Lukasz Kowalski / Poland / 2022 / Czech Premiere / 81 min.

synopsis

An eccentric Polish couple owns one of the largest pawnshops in Europe, where together with three dedicated employees they try to earn a living every single day. They buy and sell almost anything you can imagine: religious relics, sex books, mammoth teeth, you name it. At the same time, they’re also highly valued members of their Silesian small-town community where they’re seen by their fellow citizens as good Samaritans and therapists. This tragicomic film, which uses the at-times absurd and diverse pawnshop as an example, thematizes the socio-economic problems of the Polish border: from poverty and a lack of jobs to alcoholism and domestic violence.

“It's the kind of tragicomic gaze that makes this film such a pleasure to watch, and the fact that the titular pawnshop is located on Perseverance Street really does say it all.” (Marta Bałaga)

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Source: https://www.cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/423793/

biography

Łukasz Kowalski (* 1984) is a Polish film director, journalist, and TV series creator. He studied social communication in Katowice and film direction at the Wajda School in Warsaw. Since 2007, he has been working with Polish Television, for which he has created a number of investigative reports and short documentary films.