Marta Kownacka
1941, the Warsaw ghetto. Filip, a young Polish Jew, with his beloved Sarah are getting ready to perform in a cabaret to earn a living. During the premiere, a shootout takes place, during which Sara, as well as Philip's relatives sitting in the audience are killed. Two years later, the man works as a waiter in the restaurant of an upscale hotel in Frankfurt.
Based on a script by Andrzej Żuławski, this is a fascinating on-screen dialogue between father and son that combines nostalgia and fury, the sublime with humor, and old-school style with a sharp, penetrating look at Polish reality. The eponymous bird talk is the language used by those excluded from the aggressive majority: a history teacher tormented by children, a teacher of Polish studies fired from his job, a girl who cleans a banker’s villa, a florist with a club foot and a student with a fascination for cinema. Pushed to the margins by the extreme right, they defend themselves with irony, songs and quotes from the classics.
Tadek, a Polish detective, becomes suspicious of a controversial author when the incidents described in his unpublished novel resemble the inner workings of an unsolved murder.
An aggressive thug has problems with his girlfriend. Over the course of several chaotic days he walks around the hood, takes drugs and confronts himself with other women.
