19/10/2005

Borys Szyc, a young Polish actor who has a brilliant career on the big screen (Pręgi - Les raies by Magdalena Piekorz, Symetria by Konrad Niewolski, Vinci by Juliusz Machulski), and in TV productions , plays three roles in Hiena (Hyena), a first film for Grzegorz Lewandowski. Shooting starts at the beginning of this week.

According to the director, his first film must meet all the demands of the genre thriller. In narration, Lewandowski sets up the character of a little boy (Jakub Romanowski). This little hero lives with his mother on post-industrial land, an abandoned zone close to the swamps. The boy passes more and time in the company of an anonymous man (Borys Szyc) who lives in a rose plantation, hidden in a wooden hut. One day the boy learns that in the neighbouring village the children are disappearing...
It is therefore through the eye of a child that we watch this director’s universe. "Children are the most exposed to evil in the world. They allow, with simplicity and directness, the existence of another world, of demons, of terrible creatures, damned souls who return to earth to mistreat humans. My story comes from that universe, on the border between fiction and reality", says the director.

The screenplay was written by Grzegorz Lewandowski and the DoP is Arkadiusz Tomiak (Your name is Justine - Montreal World Film Festival 2005, special prize for artistic contribution). Andrzej Bressa and Aleksander Stefański will edit. The project is under the artistic supervision of Krzysztof Zanussi. Produced by Paweł Rakowski at Skorpion Art, the film should be complete by next Spring. Release date and distributor are not yet fixed.

(Translated from French)