Back when families still used to chronicle their lives in photo albums, the summer holidays were often followed by snapshots of Christmas Eve, the interim period slipping away imageless. The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills takes its title from a collection of poems Charles Bukowski wrote for his lover. This film’s depiction of everyday life comes across like poetry as well: three young women on a summer evening in an almost empty apartment. One of them later immerses herself in the sweet presence of small children, yet only for hours at a time, as a nanny. She puts on her make-up and the film slowly shifts to colour; from then on, it takes place in the apartment of a Polish grandmother, crammed full of the evidence of a long life. Friends come by to talk. A man dies. They drink tea. Life goes on. Autumn comes, and then winter: With tender intimacy, the film looks within the cosmos of the private for the moments in which the time in between becomes concentrated in the gaze of the horses running by. A touching illusion emerges, as if Marcin Malaszczak managed to capture the fleeting moments of life between its turning points on film. (Dorothee Wenner)
Production: Mengamuk Films, Berlin; Hot Metal Films, Pittsburgh; Balabusta, Warsaw
Screenplay: Marcin Malaszczak
Camera: Marcin Malaszczak
Cast: Natalie Warlow, Maria Christine Brehmer, Stefania Malec, Elise Brehmer
Format: DCP 1:1.33 (4:3), Colour & Black/White
Running time: 71 min
Languages: English, German, Polish
The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills
Marcin Malaszczak
2015
