’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition section. The Polish film stars Bartosz Bielenia, who broke through in Oscar nominated “Corpus Christi.”“Prime Time,” cowritten by Piątek and Łukasz Czapski, takes place on the final day of 1999. Twenty-year-old Sebastian locks himself in a TV studio in Poland, and takes two people – a celebrity presenter, played by Magdalena Popławska, and a security guard, played by Andrzej Kłak – hostage at gunpoint.
Speaking about the casting process, he said: “While casting actors and actresses I wait for the ‘click’ – it can be a small gesture, or just a word – something that takes a character out of the script and makes it credible; the character suddenly exists.” During the film, we see the hostages and Sebastian develop a bond, similar to Stockholm Syndrome, but there’s something more nuanced to it than that. “During the work on the script and then during the rehearsals […] it was fascinating to observe the relationship between them. These people would [usually] never meet, they are from different worlds, and suddenly they end up together, locked up, at gunpoint. Extreme situations intensify the experience and relationships,” Piątek said.
The eve of the new millennium is seen by the director as a “breakthrough moment.” “One felt that the world could change,” he said. “The artificially inflated specter of the Millennium Bug hung over mankind. After midnight, computers were to go crazy, ATMs would spew out money, power plants would stop working, planes would go down and the stock market and credit records would be wiped out.
Looking forward to seeing it during the festival