HEAR ME CRY

POLISH TITLE: USŁYSZCIE MÓJ KRZYK

The story of Ryszard Siwiec, a clerk from Przemyśl. In September, 1968, during a harvest festival at the 10th Anniversary Stadium in Warsaw, in front of thousands of people he poured benzene over himself and lit it in protest against the communist totalitarianism and the entrance of Warsaw Pact forces into Czechoslovakia. Severely burned, Siwiec was transferred to the hospital where he died. His sacrifice passed unnoticed. His name did not appear on the front pages of neither Polish, nor western papers. After many years, the creator of the film, on the basis of the preserved documents, confessions of relatives and eyewitnesses of the event tries to find out who Ryszard Siwiec was and the cause of his readiness to do such a terrible thing.

GENRE:
documentary
RUNNING TIME:
46'
YEAR:
DIRECTING:
Maciej Drygas
SCRIPT:
Maciej Drygas
DOP:
Stanisław Śliskowski
EDITOR:
Dorota Wardęszkiewicz
PRODUCTION:
Zespół Filmowy Zodiak, Studio Filmowe Logos

Maciej Drygas »

scriptwriter and documentary film director born in 1956 in Łódź. After graduation from the Film Directing Department at Moscow’s VGIK in 1981 he worked with Krzysztof Zanussi and Krzysztof Kieślowski as a director’s assistant. His documentaries include False Start (1981), Psychotherapy (1984), Hear My Cry (1991), State of Weightlessness (1994), Głos nadziei (2002), One Day in People’s Poland (2005). He has won a number of festival awards in, among others, Mumbai, Huston, Tai Pei, Monte Carlo, San Francisco, Nyon and Kraków. Currently he teaches at the Film School in Łódź.