My Friend the Enemy

  • 8.8 10
  • 2014
  • 55min
My Friend the Enemy
  • Original Title: My Friend the Enemy

Polish survivors of a massacre by Ukrainian nationalists in 1943 return to the lands from which they fled. Stories of horrific events and of how some Ukrainians risked their lives to save their Polish neighbours.

My Friend the Enemy
Awards
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS: IDFA/ Docs Against Gravity International Documentary Film Festival/ Polish Film Festival Los Angeles/ Chicago Polish Film Festival in America/ Al Jazeera Balkans TV Broadcast

My Friend The Enemy

An intimate human story from an unknown wartime massacre from the ‘Bloodlands” of Eastern Europe; a story as universal as Rwanda or Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

The film follows a group of Poles in the summer of 2013, revisiting their former homes in Volhynia, a remote region in western Ukraine.  They recount their wartime experiences and meet their former neighbours.

Both Ukrainians and Poles tell stories of horrific slaughter, but also reveal the complex and moving relations that existed between people who had lived alongside each other for centuries. 

Above all, the film focuses on the story of how some risked their lives to save their alleged enemies. The stories of horror are contrasted by the setting - a timeless, pastoral, lyrical landscape.

 

Production Companies

Grupa Filmowa


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