Jacek Borcuch’s Wszystko co kocham (All That I Love) – the Polish candidate for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category – has opened the annual Polish Film Festival in Los Angeles.

The screening was the first in a series of the film’s promotional screenings in the United States.

The plot of All That I Love is set in the spring of 1981, during the Solidarity revolution in Poland. Its protagonists are four teenagers who form a punk group that allows them to express their longing for freedom and rebellion toward the grey socialist reality. One of the boys, a son of an army officer, falls in love with a daughter of a Solidarity activist.

The movie shows how politics interferes with the private lives of people and families.

In an interview given to Polish Radio, members of the American Film Academy, costume designer Albert Wolsky and actor Peter Mark Richman, praised the film.

Wolsky described the movie as an excellent drama of adolescence with a universal message, adding, however, that the historical context relating to the Solidarity movement may not be understood by all American viewers.

Richman likened Polish actor Mateusz Kościukiewicz, in the role of the main protagonist, to the young Marlon Brando. They told IAR that competition is very tough, with as many as 65 films from around the world in the race for nomination in the Best Foreign Film category.

The programme of the Polish Film Festival in Los Angeles, lasting till Thursday, includes twenty films, both recent and digitally-remastered features of the 1960s (Ford’s The Teutonic Knights and Has’s The Hourglass Sanatorium. (mk)