“We Joke That This is a Pre-COVID Movie Made from a Safe Social Distance”: Paweł Łoziński on his First Look Closing-Night Doc The Balcony Movie

As its title implies, Paweł Łoziński’s The Balcony Movie, which closes this year’s First Look Festival on March 20, is a film shot entirely from a balcony. Which may sound like the worst elevator pitch of all time until one realizes that the balcony belongs to the acclaimed Polish documentarian behind the lens (who also happens to be the son of also esteemed Polish documentarian Marcel Łoziński). Less concept film than “secular confessional,” as the Warsaw-based director puts it, Łoziński spent over two years (beginning pre-pandemic) filming the many men and women of all ages, not to mention their dogs and kids, who passed in front of his apartment building. And not just coldly observing, but warmly engaging in earnest conversation with those below, from a homeless stranger to his own ticked off wife. (“What’s the meaning of life?” he shouts to one elderly woman in a wheelchair. Her sly reply? “Life is meaning.”) It’s through these random interactions that Łoziński unearths a vast array of future hopes and past regrets, while we the viewer likewise learn quite a bit about the viewer holding the camera as well. Even as he remains a disembodied voice from on high, physically unrevealed. A few days prior to closing night Filmmaker reached out to the First Look vet (2018’s You Have No Idea How Much I Love You) to find out how (and why) he turned his neighborhood sidewalk into a humanist movie set.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.