{"id":78438,"date":"2026-05-09T08:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T08:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/78438\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T08:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T08:36:12","slug":"millennium-docs-against-gravity-opens-with-award-winning-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/78438\/","title":{"rendered":"Millennium Docs Against Gravity Opens With Award-Winning ‘Closure’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe first weekend of Millennium Docs Against Gravity<\/a> \u2013 the prestigious international film festival in Poland \u2013 is underway after opening with Closure<\/a>, the new film directed by Warsaw native Micha\u0142 Marczak.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe wrenching documentary about a father\u2019s desperate search for his missing teenage son won the Golden Alexander<\/a> at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece in March and premiered in World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance.<\/p>\n

\n\tMarczak\u2019s journey to make the film began as he spent time on the Vistula River in Warsaw. While on a raft with his family \u2013 the director was scouting locations for a fiction project \u2014 he noticed a man plying the waters intently in a boat. After engaging him in conversation, Marczak learned the man, named Daniel, was looking for his son Chris who had last been seen standing on the Warsaw Bridge overlooking the river.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Closure'\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Closure\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMDAG<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA rotating CCTV camera caught [Chris] there standing for 20 minutes. And as it swung back around, we don\u2019t know if he jumped or made it off the bridge and possibly escaped,\u201d Marczak told Deadline\u2019s Doc Talk podcast<\/a>. \u201cThe father decided to search the river by himself. He built this custom-made boat outfitted with cameras, sonars, drones to probe the murky waters. So, it\u2019s a \u2018an old man in the sea\u2019 type of a story, a Fitzcarraldo-type character, fighting against all odds to find the truth about what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMarczak spent many months with Daniel as he continued his search, sometimes the two of them camping along the river.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMany times, it was just easier to sleep on these islands or banks and so that you don\u2019t waste time and that most of the time goes for the search,\u201d he recalled. \u201cAfter [searching] for hours and you sit down at night, exhausted, by the campfire, all these thoughts come to you \u2014 about what could I be doing better, or how could I navigate the challenges of raising my now two sons in this world? And where, as a society, we have gone wrong\u2026 Totally desolate, empty nature yields these kinds of more metaphysical conversations. So, we would just sit and contemplate our lives. And I would ask him for advice. He would ask me, and that\u2019s how we became close to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWithout knowing if his son jumped to his death or perhaps left the bridge and is still alive somewhere, Daniel cannot find closure, nor can his wife. Daniel keeps searching month upon month, unable to give up on his son, even as his father counsels against continuing what could be considered an obsession.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a psychological film about the effects of that situation on the family and on Daniel,\u201d Marczak notes, adding, \u201cand on other families as well.\u201d Other families whose loved ones have gone missing after hurling themselves from the bridge.<\/p>\n

\n\tIntroducing the film at the Multikino Z\u0142ote Tarasy venue in Warsaw, MDAG<\/a> Artistic Director Karol Piekarczyk said Closure had helped him deal with grief in his own life. The impact of Closure has been similarly profound for many viewers. In Thessaloniki, Marczak told us about a voicemail he received from a person who had seen the documentary.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe said, \u2018Listen, I\u2019ve had some bad days. I\u2019ve had really deep, dark thoughts. But after I saw your movie, I know that I\u2019m never, ever going to commit suicide,\u2019\u201d the director recalled. \u201cAnd I cried when I heard that message.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'Closure'<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Closure\u2019 director Michal Marczak<\/a> holds the Golden Alexander award from the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival in Greece.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthew Carey<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the festival in Greece, Marczak told us the film came together at almost lightning speed by documentary standards.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe did this movie in 14 months from the moment we met the protagonist and we shot for a year,\u201d Marczak explained. \u201cWe were super-fast editing as we went, just really trying to stretch our resources and to get this movie out.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to Sundance and Thessaloniki, Closure has screened at True\/False in Columbia, MO and will screen next month at Sheffield DocFest in the UK and at the Sydney Film Festival in Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first weekend of Millennium Docs Against Gravity \u2013 the prestigious international film festival in Poland \u2013 is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[95],"tags":[6841,41880,41881,41882,182,181],"class_list":["post-78438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-warsaw","tag-closure","tag-mdag","tag-michal-marczak","tag-millennium-docs-against-gravity","tag-poland","tag-warsaw"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116543709994901890","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}