MOCAK Summer Cinema | Pamfir

As usual, during the summer holidays, MOCAK invites viewers to evening film screenings. This year’s edition is inspired by the exhibitions currently on show.

The screenings will take place on Fridays from 4 July to 29 August in the museum arcades.

The 2025 Summer Cinema repertoire comprises contemporary European films, whose topic and emotional ambience correspond to the contexts of the current exhibitions. A generation of bold young filmmakers consistently use their idiosyncratic style to tell stories about entering adulthood, turbulent relationships with peers and adults, facing traumas, finding fulfilment, drawing strength from imagination, and the experiences of joys and sorrows from the perspective of childhood – a time when everything was simpler and yet most difficult. Breaking down the conventions of a specific genre, experimenting with the format or employing the convention of a fairy tale, each of the filmmakers touches on a different truth about what we experience as children and how it affects all of our later life.

Admission 10 PLN. Tickets can be purchased at the museum box office from Tuesday to Sunday from 11 am to 7 pm and online (while the limited numbers last). Tickets purchased electronically will be sent to the email address provided once the payment has been credited.

Cinema curator: Adrian D. Kowalski

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Friday 18 July 9 pm

Pamfir

Poland, France, Luxembourg, Chile, Ukraine, 2022

directed by: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk

1 h 43 min

In Ukrainian, with Polish subtitles

A virtuoso crime thriller, a picturesque Carpathian western, or perhaps a folk tale on steroids? Enthusiastically received at Cannes, Pamfir draws liberally on genre cinema, but – just like its main protagonist, Pamfir – breaks all the rules, because this is the only way to survive in the corrupt borderland world of corrupt cops and smugglers sneaking through the forest. Bathed in the mists of Bukovina, immersed in mysterious local rituals and brutal local arrangements, Dmytr Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s debut is not a portrayal of the Ukrainian countryside that we might expect; yet, at the same time, it is a universal story about unconditional love. About a son who wants to be like his father, and about a father who will do anything possible to prevent his son from following in his footsteps. Pamfir, once a smuggler, now a labourer earning a living in Poland, has returned home to Western Ukraine. He wants to spend the annual carnival in the village and, above all, to be with his wife and son. However, the teenage Nazar gets into trouble and his father is forced to repay his debt. Pamfir renews old contacts and accepts one last assignment. Little does he know that he is entering a world where everything can be smuggled in, except the good. One of the best Ukrainian films of the year masterfully weaves together cinematic conventions, pagan myths and Ukrainian reality. In Pamfir, labour migration seems to be the only chance to escape the lack of prospects and the omnipresent corruption – but it separates families for years. There are distant echoes of war, adding new and surprising meanings to the film. Although Pamir does not refer directly to the invasion, the visionary film has become a metaphor for the present situation.

Trailer: youtube.com/watch?v=amUXL8h8l2M