Bilet powrotny

I saw "Bilet powrotny" (Return ticket) on Polish television, and to my surprise, I liked it a lot. Film directors like Ewa and Czeslaw Petelski or Bohdan Poreba were members of the communist party, so in the 1970s and 1980s I avoided their films in movie theaters. But even then I had to admit that they were film profis and sometimes produced good and free-of-any-propaganda movies. So Ewa and Czeslaw Petelski directed "The Depot of the Dead," "The Artillery Sergeant Kalen" and "Return Ticket," which I consider Polish film classics. "Return ticket" is a story about a young and unsophisticated country woman (Antonina) emigrating to Canada in order to help her beloved son buy a house in the city. To achieve her goals, she even marries a French Canadian (Pierre), whom she doesn't love. I will say no more about the plot so as not to spoil potential viewers enjoying the story. The plot itself is straightforward, engaging, and firmly rooted in the reality of the 1970s, when the black market value of the American or Canadian dollar was incredibly high. But some points of the film are true even today, so it is definitely more than just pure entertainment or a journey to the past. It can still act like a mirror to the people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. I also enjoyed the acting of Anna Seniuk and Leszek Herdegen (it was the last major film role of Leszek Herdegen) which made the story convincing and gripping and added more depth and human dimension to the characters of Antonina and Pierre.