DKF | “Candidates of Death” directed by Maciej Cuske

Discussion Film Club

“Candidates of Death” directed by Maciej Cuske

The event is co-financed by the Polish Institute of Film Art.

As part of the project “Over coffee about the film”. Movie meetups with no age restrictions.

One vacation, one camera and the idea of a common horror game gave rise to an adventure that has been going on for more than a dozen years. Maciej Cuske took his son and two of his colleagues on a film trip, wanting to distract the boys from computers. Holiday fun has become a tradition, and subsequent amateur horrors - a record of growing up and unusual friendship.

“Candidates of Death” is a humorous and moving documentary about passion, closeness and the passing of time. Boys become adult men, their dreams, passions and life paths change, but the need to create together still unites them. Can childhood friendships survive?

We invite you to a video that reminds you how precious the time spent together is...

After the film, a meeting with the heroes of the film story is planned.

More about the film:

Maciej Cuske's “Candidates of Death” has been hailed as a “documentary Boyhood”. Although the starting point here is a youthful passion for shooting amateur horror films, above all we get a beautiful, authentic and tender picture of growing up. This is a story of men who are not afraid of feelings and a tribute to the empowering friendship and father-son relationship.

Maciej Cuske created an extremely personal film, in which life wisdom is permeated with a sharp wit, which effectively means that there is no room for tact here, but there is plenty of it to show true closeness. Evening conversations about fears, life failures and puberty become a universal record of building lasting bonds and generational exchange. An open parent begins with fascination, learning from his own child.

This is how the director at the MDAG Festival Studio recalled the beginnings of this project:

“It all started with a small idea, or rather with an impressive awareness of the passing of time. I drowned in more projects and work while my son, Stas, grew up. He was already thirteen years old, and I saw how slowly I was losing influence over him. I felt that something was irretrievably eluding me — just like a father. I just wanted to spend time with him. However, it was not easy, because Stas was already very close to his colleagues. So I had an idea: I'll take them all on a vacation together. I wanted to get a closer look at this fleeting moment — the very end of their childhood. I had to come up with some clever patent to persuade the guys to go on such a trip. For nothing in the world they wanted to voluntarily go into the wilderness, into some kind of deafness. For the first three years we went to a wooden hut in Podlasie. We slept in a tent, drew water from the well, used a wooden outcrop. No stores, no internet or TV. For them, this form of spending time was inconceivable, it exceeded the limits of their imagination. So my catch became a promise to help them shoot a horror movie together. And that really made them tick.

Stas's friend, Raphael, was really crazy about this. He was firmly convinced that he would make films like Tarantino. He could not imagine another life or another world. I used his inexhaustible energy a little bit to make cinema. I didn't know at the time that it would take so long. Over time, the boys grew up, and with them their ambitions grew. Our trips became more and more challenging, and the conditions in which we realized our horrors became more and more difficult. We invented everything hot, on the spot. This spontaneity made us live an extremely intense, fantastic time that we always wanted to return to.”

The two audience awards at the Millennium Docs Against Gravity festival speak for themselves. The audience loved Maciej Cuske's new film, which she also expressed in user reviews on Filmweb. The film has an average of 8.1 with almost 800 ratings. People who have already had the opportunity to see the film, write about it like this:

“You can build a raft together, shoot amateur horrors, laugh at your own ideas, but you can also say I love you without shame, admit your weakness or cry”

“Male conversations, male adventures, male friendships. There is laughter (a lot, a lot of laughter) and a little bit of crying.”

“When you go to a cool movie that's supposed to be fun, and you get a beautiful story about passion, sacrifice, love and friendship. It's funny, it's touching, it's meaningful. And above all, it is sincere and with incredible lightness.”

“It touches, entertains, leaves you warm. One of the most beautiful documents I've ever seen in my life. Wonderful!”.

Poland 2026 1h 35m

Release Date: 07 August 2026