The Film
My first full-length documentary. After Saska Kępa – Dzielnica z Klimatem proved that a school film could be taken seriously, I wanted to go further — a proper portrait of a place, told by the people who live there.
Grochów sits east of the Vistula, just south of Praga — working-class, post-industrial, often described through absence rather than presence. The film is built around interviews with residents talking about the past, present, and future of the district. Combined with high-quality aerial footage, it gives the neighborhood a scale and intimacy it rarely gets elsewhere.
What Happened
The response followed the pattern of the first film, and then some. Television and radio invited me for interviews. Nearly 200 people attended the premiere at Centrum Promocji Kultury in Praga Południe. The film reached almost 10,000 views on YouTube.
For a second project — still in high school — it confirmed that the first film wasn’t a fluke.
Context
Directed, edited, and published by me. Drone operation was handled by a specialist. The harder work was the interviews: finding the right people, earning enough trust to get something honest on camera, and then shaping those conversations in the edit into something that held together as a film.
Grochów isn’t a glamorous subject. That was the point.