Vika!

Agnieszka Zwiefka / Poland, Germany, Finland / 2023 / Czech Premiere / 74 min.

synopsis

The oldest Polish DJ, Virginia Szmyt, who is known to dance-party-goers as Vika, will be eighty-five years old this year. She manages to make crowds dance and actively speaks out in public against the stereotypes associated with old age. Behind the door of her apartment, however, she is a lonely widow with tragic memories of World War II and severed ties with her family. This multi-layered, emotional portrait of an indomitable life force looks with tender melancholy into Vika's quest to live fully in the here and now despite the layers of societal norms. The experience of the present moment is all the more powerful in regard to the jagged map of her personal history and her intense awareness of her own finitude.

“What a person needs most in life is tenderness, which, once a loved one dies, he’ll never receive.”

biography

Agnieszka Zwiefka (1978) is an acclaimed film director known for her films The Queen of Silence and Scars, screened at global festivals. She collaborates with TV stations like HBO Europe, ZDF/ARTE, SVT, YLE, and RAI. Holding a PhD, she also teaches documentary filmmaking at the University of Wroclaw. She is a member of the European Film Academy, the Polish Filmmakers Society, and the EWA European Women’s Audiovisual Network.

more about film

director:	Agnieszka Zwiefka
producer:	Katarzyna Ślesicka, Anna Stylińska
script:	Agnieszka Zwiefka
photography:	Monika Kotecka
editing:	Katarzyna Orzechowska, Michał Poddębniak
music:	Paivi Takala
sound:	Katarzyna Szczerba, Anna Rok
sound design:	Pietari Koskinen
co-producer:	Heino Deckert, Tina Börner, Outi Rousu, Elena Filippini