Ich, Tomek

Hard and effective.

Also one of the strong films in KVIFF this year. A really strong tale about boy prostitutes on the former border of Poland and Germany. I thought the main actor did a superb job and the directing was accurate and well done.

I almost started to hate the stupidity of the young main actress, so the film really got me and I was following it strongly.

The film brings something new to the old "Prostitute plot" by the destruction of some of the characters. There is a great "James Dean -Giant" touch in the story. Success corrupts and changes man.

I can really recommend this eastern European gem. The only big weakness in it is the script that at some point stops going on. The film starts to go over and over the same themes and doesn't move forward. That's why it stays as a eight and not a nine.

The topic of child prostitution is one of the hardest to grasp on the camera and my admiration goes to every director who has taken a shot at the topic so far.

Swinki is a surprising portrayal of the industry and has a take on the subject which, unlike in other movies, shows the kids voluntarily slip in the industry for money and keep coming back for more before they discover it might be too late to leave.

The film portrays this development accordingly, with the young actors presenting just the right amount of professionalism and amateurism needed for their characters to be believable. The plot is easy to follow with several surprising and shocking moments that let you peak in how far things can go.

However, having said all that, I felt a topic such as this has much more potential to study in more depth than those Glinski shows on screen.

When compared to Lilja-4ever, a film which is one of those films that you will never forget and one of the best ones I've seen on the subject, Swinki is a only a nicely told tale with a good structure that is somehow afraid to dig deeper and show more layers to this horrible issue happening in our world every single day.

The subject dealt with in the movie is no doubt, a difficult one.. It should not be touched by directors of the lower sort or students as it may be the case here. I have a problem to establish which of the 2 Polish movies is worse? "Zielone lata" or "Swinki". The previous is far older movie so it is forgiven. The latter one is unforgivably low quality... the acting is beyond any comments,alas except perhaps for Tomek but also only "just". The dialogs are clumsy, unnatural, most of the time unnecessary and dummy. Of course there is a room in them for vulgarity as usually is the case in most Polish movies searching for a cheap stunt. Poles love talking and because talk is cheap...they do a lot of it in movies. Unintelligently executed work. Not much is happening for the duration of 3/4 of the movie... then the finale is somewhat acceptable.. Not the conversations of course... they will be no good to the very end. I've made subs for this movie and that was a real torture for me. This type of social issues, as i mentioned already - should never be allowed to be handled by an amateur crew. Waste of time to watch...If you are into these type of society problems - go for the British "The war zone" Not that is spectacular but at least the acting is not that bad...Boy, o boy... those Poles :-)