16/11/2022 - In this drama-thriller, the audience is whisked away on a dizzying trip through the night on a Polish motorway

Ewa Wikieł is a German-based filmmaker with Polish roots. With her first feature-length film, Krzyk – Losing Control [+see also:
interview: Ewa Wikieł
film profile], she is now graduating from the Berlin film school DFFB. Shooting for the film took place in two phases. The first was from September to November 2021, over 27 days, in the Polish city of Łódź, while the second lasted three days and took place in mid-January 2022 in Berlin. The drama is now in post-production and is planned to be completed by mid-December this year.

So far, the project has been presented successfully at several work-in-progress programmes – namely, Les Arcs, the German Films Previews in Munich and Polish Days at the New Horizons Film Festival in Wroclaw. The film has been made possible thanks to its association with the “Leuchtstoff” initiative, which is supported by Berlin-based TV channel rbb and film-funding institution Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. The initiative concentrates on features and documentaries that have a link with the regions of Berlin and Brandenburg. Since 2012, it has granted financial support to first features and graduation films as well as big productions by more experienced filmmakers.

For the thriller Krzyk – Losing Control, which is not the first collaboration between Leuchtstoff and the DFFB, Ewa Wikieł wrote the screenplay together with Halina Rasinski. Konstantin Minnich, who was trained in the USA as well as at the DFFB, is responsible for the cinematography. He has extensive experience in several genres, has made films, adverts and music videos, and has worked in many parts of the world.

The story is centred on Lena, who is 38 years old and lives in Poland. One night, while driving to Łódź on a motorway, she witnesses an accident. She sees how a woman trapped in a car burns to death. The screams of Nina, the victim, haunt Lena from then on, and she starts to suffer more and more from insomnia. Lena tries to find out who the woman was. This quest whisks the protagonist away on a physical as well as an emotional journey into her subconscious. The nights on the motorway turn into nightmares, and Lena has to find a way out of them.

The international cast includes German actress Gina Henkel, who played a major role in the German-Danish drama Giraffe [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Anna Sofie Hartmann; German actor Anton Weil (The New End [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]); Polish actors Pawel Deląg (Stars [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Wiktoria Gorodeckaja (Icarus. The Legend of Mietek Kosz [+see also:
trailer
film profile]); and Spanish thesp Natalia Mateo (Unbridled [+see also:
trailer
interview: Jota Linares
film profile]).

The film is a co-production between the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) and Big Kedi Pictures, represented by Ibrahim-Utku Erdogan. Funding has been granted by rbb and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. A festival strategy is still in the works, and the filmmakers are currently seeking a distributor.

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