Snow

After a few years spent abroad, poet Ka returns to his hometown Kars. Oficially – to take part in his mother’s funeral. Unoficially he is investigating a mysterious case of supposed suicides of young women. Immediately after his arrival a snow storm breaks out and cuts off Kars from the rest of the world. The revolution is coming. The town becomes a state miniature with all its internal problems, mechanisms and tensions and Ka becomes involved in a web of intrigues – military, nationalists, religion fanatics, terrorists – all of them fighting for power. All of them are supported by local media which create a new world by using fake news. And the women’s rights movement remains in the background.

Ka has to decide which party he is after, while being torn between East and West, institutionalized religion and his personal quest for God, with all his doubts, like a snow-flake in the wind. It seems that only poetry and love can rescue him. But is rescue still possible in this world?                     

 „Snow” directed by Bartosz Szydłowski is the first Polish adaptation of Orhan Pamuk’s book which was published in 2002 by Wydawnictwo Literackie. Margaret Atwood acknowledged it to be one of the most important books of our times. „The Guardian” called it a political thriller inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevski. „Der Tagesspiegel” called it a report changed into a fairytale and a „ grotesque, cruel and very comic novel, a political farce, where man never stands on a right side”.