Unable to fit into his surroundings, an Indian filmmaker living in Poland decides to use his camera to his advantage. In “Letters from Wolf Street” the director, Arjun Talwar, begins to film his closest surroundings. The street he lives on turns out to be a good starting point. With a dance school, several Vietnamese restaurants, barbers, shoemaker, numerous shops, various inhabitants and one talkative postman, the place turns out to be a bustling microcosm of Poland. Once a pride march passes nearby, only to be followed up by a nationalist Independence Day celebrations couple of months later.
Letters from Wolf Street is sceening at Berlin International Film Festival
Talwar’s documentary is an example of immigrant cinema largely unique to the Polish documentary tradition. The director migrated to Poland over a decade ago in order to study cinematography at Lodz Film School. Since then, he has been struggling to fit in a society which only recently begun to open itself up to the outsiders. “Letters…” will no doubt be fascinating to Polish as well as international audiences as Talwar’s outsider perspective and the director’s good eye for everyday absurdities have certain unmasking qualities.
The film is equally about the eponymous street (which the director uses as synecdoche for the whole country), as it is about Talwar himself. This is again interesting in the context of Polish documentary’s predilection for observational and distancing methods. Here, the director does the opposite, and his personal perspective and involvement becomes a key element of the film.
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Talwar probes the openness of his neighbors, and his natural charm allows him to quickly strike up connections with strangers on Wilcza street. Similarly to another recent Polish documentary, Paweł Łoziński’s hit “Balcony Movie”, the fun of the film relies on the magic of random and improvised encounters. These vary from simply quirky and funny, to more serious and touching. The characters Talwar interviews reoccur in later sequences, which allows the director to create a sense of a micro-universe confined to the limits of one street in Warsaw. The film, shot over an extended period of time, benefits from the longer production process. Various strands and stories have space to develop naturally, which adds to the ebbing and flowing pace of the “Letters…”.
Despite being shot almost as a guerrilla production, the film’s raw and DIY aesthetics have their charm, helped by the director’s attention to random details that embellish the otherwise completely mundane street. Talwar mostly does everything by himself, with occasional help from his former film school friend Mo Tan. The woman jumps onto the project to make money, as she openly admits, but also to provide her perspective as another outsider to Polish society. The director gathers a plethora of people who, similarly to Mo or him, operate as strangers within the country.
Talwar’s voice over, paired with jazzy music composed by Aleksander Makowski, shapes the droll tone of the film. Sometimes abstract and often sarcastic, the narration guides the viewer through the story. This allows to connect random bits of footage into a tale that has a degree of coherence (however, part of the film’s fun also comes from how disjointed it is at times). In the opening act, the director’s voice over comes across as slightly infantile, however, as the film unfolds, one begins to notice Talwar’s more confrontational side. Some of his questions regarding the racism and close-mindedness of Poles are pointed and add a more discursive side to the documentary. Contrary to the initial sequences, “Letters from Wolf Street” is not a cute portrait of an Indian who has a Stockholm’s Syndrome and stays in a country which seemingly does not accept him.
In the tensest sequence of the movie, the two filmmakers decide to go to a march commemorating the Polish Independence. Over the years, the march became a platform for nationalism, xenophobia or fascism. Talwar, a brown-skinned man, clearly does not fit the picture at the event. The sequence concludes with the protagonist asking a man in the crowd whether he could wave his Polish flag for a second. Once the stranger agrees, Talwar grabs the flag and feels it in his hands. It’s a strange scene that encapsulates the conflicting relationship the protagonist has with his new home country. It’s also an image that could perhaps be applicable to any migrant experience around the world.
Whether Talwar likes it or not, the film stands out among Polish documentaries, but also shares many similarities with them. In a vein similar to a Kieślowski or a Łoziński documentary, “Letters from Wolf Street” are an exercise in minimalism. However, the small scale still allows the director to paint a picture of the Polish society in the present day. The picture, of course, isn’t full, but it still gives an idea and offers hope for the future.
