Dismay (2022)

"Dismay" is a magical and brutal story set in a Masurian village, about the extraordinary bond between a father and an eight-year-old daughter, and about the terrible consequences of trying to take away a hypersensitive girl from an alcohol-addicted musician. Little Ula does not know that at her First Communion party, instead of the long-awaited mother who has left her father, a curator from the social welfare centre will appear, ready to take her to an orphanage at once. However, the girl will never allow anyone to take back what she has managed to save after her mother left. Together with her father, a local organist, against all odds, she believes her mother will come back and she is still waiting for that moment. The joyful, May day of the First Holy Communion will turn into a nightmarish triumph of the wild world of Masurian nature, which is little Ula’s only ally.