A touching, beautiful film about the hard love of a daughter and a father
Maryia's father lapsed into illness when she was still a teenager. A happy childhood in Minsk ended abruptly - now her mother has to cope with everything herself, and also visit her sick husband in a psychiatric clinic. Dad will never get back to his old self, the family will have to live with his illness all the time. And again and again, Maria will try to comprehend the terrifying metamorphoses of her father, and one of the results of this painful process will be a film about this sad and beautiful story. "Papa" is a representative of the hybrid genre of documentary animation, one of the most relevant in cinema. The debutante director, who consistently studied painting and then animation, decided to combine these different ways to convey her story to the audience, and she did it perfectly well. In her autobiographical chronicle, Maryia Yakimovich turns to the most intimate things. "Papa" is striking in its sincerity and filming excellence. Family stories are not uncommon in documentaries, where confession has long been a trend. But even compared to the other personal stories, the plot of "Papa" surprises with its extreme sincerity. Maryia Yakimovich claims that the film became some sort of psychotherapy for her since it allowed her to unburden a long-standing family trauma. The film uses old photographs and the family’s VHS chronicle, which are amalgamated into an author's statement using a unique collage technique.
Original language: Polish, Russian Subtitles: Belarusian | English