NIEMESKI, dir. Daria Kubisiak

Unmanly, what is it?

Feminine, feminine, weak, tearful, soft, cowardly, unfree, effeminate, inflated? Or maybe even differently? Maybe just liberated from poses and fears, free from the compulsion of competing and straining muscles, freed from culturally imposed behaviors that you may enjoy on screen, but in life...? Non-male, that is, one who makes up his own mind. Non-man, that is, he who does not benefit from the privileges granted to him, it is not known by whom. A non-man, that is, one who says what he feels, does not always have to win, because his life is not a contest, a match or a race. This is difficult to understand for the protagonists of the show — four men on a bend and under pressure, but it must be admitted that they try very hard and the filmmakers try to convince them that “unmanly” is not an insult, but a compliment.

The twisted stories of the protagonists confront the cultural breakdown of the system, and “unmanly” is utopian speculation about its state. In scenes in humorous and dreamlike convention, men are given soft competencies, usually attributed to women. Lost heroes with complexes are trying to find themselves in a new reality still on the border between waking and dreaming. The “non-man” will also help us to get used to the fears, fears and fears caused by the declining patriarchy.