Wenecja (Venice)

Wenecja (Venice) 2010
Director: Jan Jakub Kolski
Country:Poland
Runtime:110min


Eleven-year-old Marek has an obsessive desire to go to with his
family to Venice, the city on water. He has learned all of its streets
and squares by heart. Will his dream come true? Well, it is 1939,
Hitler is getting set to invade Poland and his father has joined the
army. Instead, Marek and his mother go to Aunt Veronica’s villa in
Zaleszczykach on the San. He builds a replica of Venice (if he
can’t go to Venice then have it come to him) when the basement
floods.
Venice tells a story of a journey never taken. A story in which the
power of dreams makes it possible to turn a flooded cellar into the
most romantic city on Earth. As the WW2 rages on outside the
window, the “Venetian” cellar awakens great expectations and
passions.
At first, these are the dreams of children, full of pure belief in
making the things possible by a force of will and mind, but later
the further generations of a big family join the specific play that
changes into a ritual of an attempt of overcoming the hostile
world by the human spirit.
The special, old, family nest-house seems to be a final asylum and
brings a promise of safety. This feeling flows gradually over to the
next and next circles of the family’s friends, neighbors and – finally
– total strangers that one day come inside. How will it stand the
confrontation with the cruelty of war?