22/09/2026 - Jan Holoubek turns Nazi-occupied Poland into a wintry western-noir whose strong performances help to make up for its occasionally ponderous pace

World-premiering in the Platform section of the Toronto International Film Festival, Polish director Jan Holoubek’s Wild, Wild East takes one of cinema’s most exhaustively depicted periods and filters it through the grammar of another familiar genre: the western. The result is an atmospheric, deliberately paced thriller whose artistic confidence often compensates for a narrative that takes rather too long to reach its destination.

The pic is set in occupied Poland, specifically in the remote town of Małe Zalesie, in 1943, where German officials, opportunistic locals and frightened inhabitants have settled into an uneasy coexistence. This precarious equilibrium is disrupted when Martin Wolff (played by Itay Tiran) rides into town, ostensibly to investigate missing documents and the disappearance of a local lawyer. His real interest, however, lies in rumours of gold belonging to Levi, a wealthy Jewish resident who fled Poland. Wolff’s enquiries quickly draw the attention of Polish steward Kaim (Robert Więckiewicz), the local German authorities and others with their own interest in the supposed treasure.

Holoubek makes no attempt to disguise the western grammar. Wolff is essentially the mysterious stranger riding into a lawless frontier settlement, except that snow replaces dust, and the occupying Nazis make the absence of the law considerably more sinister. Cinematographer Bartłomiej Kaczmarek repeatedly reduces human beings to small, dark figures against vast, white expanses, while cramped interiors, muddy streets and heavy shadows nudge the picture towards noir. Holoubek himself cites the genre cinema of the 1960s and 1970s, including Sergio Leone and the Polish post-war western The Law and the Fist, and that lineage is visible without the film becoming a mere exercise in copying its inspirations.

Here, the main problem is rhythm. Aleksandra Takuska’s screenplay accumulates secrets, double identities, competing agendas and shifting alliances, but Holoubek sometimes allows the mystery to simmer past its optimal temperature.

What keeps Wild, Wild East compelling are the performances, imbued with the right dose of moral greyness. Tiran is particularly persuasive, giving Wolff the physicality of a western antihero while keeping his motivations just about opaque enough to sustain the mystery. Meanwhile, Więckiewicz brings comparable weight to Kaim, and Jan Bülow, Joanna Kulig and the rest of the ensemble convincingly inhabit a world in which virtually every conversation conceals another calculation.

In its final stretch, however, Wild, Wild East changes gears. The western trappings begin to fall away as the film confronts the historical horror that has been lurking in the background all along. The shift is effective, though perhaps a little too heavy-handed: some of the ambiguity that makes the movie so intriguing gives way to more explicit symbolism and a starker moral divide.

Nevertheless, Holoubek has managed to deliver a solid piece of genre filmmaking, one that finds an unusual route into familiar historical terrain. Its slow burn sometimes simply burns too slowly, but the bleak landscapes, strong ensemble, and collision between western mythology and wartime brutality do succeed in hitting the mark.

Wild, Wild East was produced by Poland’s Madants, Extreme Emotions and Holograph, with Global Constellation handling its international sales.