31/03/2022 - Łukasz Kowalski welcomes us to the place where they sell, well, almost everything

Welcome to the biggest pawnshop in Poland. There are used leather jackets everywhere, old DVDs, shelves stacked with religious trinkets and kitchen appliances that are reportedly still working. Reportedly, as one angry customer actually calls in to complain, starting what must surely be the single longest conversation about a blender, ever.

There are also souvenirs brought in day after day by former miners, now struggling to find their place. Their region, Silesia, used to be known for its coal. But it started to transform way, way back, leaving them all behind, unable to catch up. It would be interesting to know if the director of The Pawnshop, Łukasz Kowalski, also has Silesian roots. Also because his take on this world, still with one foot in the past, is tender yet brutally honest.

It’s the kind of tragicomic gaze that makes this film – world-premiering at CPH:DOX – such a pleasure to watch, and the fact that the titular pawnshop is located on Perseverance Street really does say it all. It doesn’t seem to be working – at least not as a proper business, as no matter how hard you hustle, the till is still “empty all the fucking time”. The people who work there, continuously chain-smoking with what feels like real, deep commitment, argue about money, or mostly the lack of it, and then give things away for free. The way they deal with the customers brings back the not-so-fond memories of the Polish People’s Republic, which existed until 1989, but sometimes the harshness is suddenly gone, replaced by curiosity and sympathy. There is no telling who they are, whether they want to take advantage of this broken community or support it. Maybe it’s both, which makes it interesting.

Kowalski doesn’t need to do much here – not when the peroxided lady who seems to be running the joint (and keeps wondering if she still loves its boss) insists on wearing fur to work every day, for no apparent reason, and barely takes it off. These are fantastic characters to follow, and Aki Kaurismäki would probably like them as well. “We sell almost everything,” they advertise, very honestly, we might add, but they also buy quite a bit. In this place, a mammoth’s tooth can apparently come in handy, as the shop owner can’t resist another odd trophy to put on the counter.

Once they decide to shoot a video advertising it all, things become too absurd to handle. But it’s not always about having a good chuckle. The locals tend to bring their stories along with their last few belongings, and it’s hard to listen to them most of the time. Big families don’t have a clue how to survive the next week, there are tales of domestic violence, alcoholism and incarceration, and poverty is visible from the get-go. “Thank you for the conversation,” says one especially desperate woman, who came in to sell something, but probably mostly to talk about her pain. Maybe that’s the point of this place, after all – it just allows these difficult discussions to happen, somewhere in between a broken lawnmower and a towering stack of old shoes. And yes, sometimes they will be all about blenders.

The Pawnshop is a Polish production staged by the director himself and Anna Mazerant.