Polish cinematographer, writer and director Michał Marczak gained recognition (and some notoriety) with 2012’s Fuck for Forest [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film], and in 2016, he won the Best Director Award at Sundance for All These Sleepless Nights [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film]. Now, he’s back at Sundance, in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, with his new doc, Closure, an intense take on a tragic topic.

The film follows Daniel, a man in his late forties, who is searching for his missing son Krzysztof, or “Chris”, as the English subtitles identify him. The 16-year-old was last seen on a Warsaw bridge across the Vistula River, appearing on CCTV camera footage and then disappearing after it rotated back to where he was standing. The police investigation led nowhere, and reports from witnesses who said they saw him turned out to be false, so Daniel – with his other son, Patryk, and other helpers, who at times also include his own father – spends his days on and around the river, looking for the body.

Excerpts from a TV show serve as a form of narration that connects us to the timeline and wider social angle of the story. For more than a year, regardless of weather conditions or time of day, Daniel is on his boat equipped with increasingly sophisticated technology, scouring the river and its surrounding bushes and woods. Both he and his wife, Agnieszka, seen together in their home, are going through the agony of uncertainty, which often leads them to rather irrational but absolutely understandable ideations that Chris will maybe get in touch when he turns 18. So, the hope of finding his body is a bitter one, but at least it would bring closure. And whether the boy might have committed suicide is a sensitive point that Marczak introduces as Daniel goes through his son’s TikTok account. The implications of the isolation of young people on the internet feel more tacked on to the story than organically integrated, but the film would have lost a lot of its suspense if this aspect had been foregrounded from the get-go.

As time passes by and Daniel’s search offers no results, other people whose relatives went missing get in touch to ask him for help – he is now considered more reliable and thorough than the police.

Marczak is also the DoP on the picture, and he goes for an immersive approach: the camera is always moving along with the protagonists, often staying quite close to them and filming them from skewed angles, conveying the anguish they are experiencing. It glides over the surface of the river and dives into its muddy depths, always in alternation, as if we could expect a body to pop up at any moment. Aerial shots provide a sense of scale, and the strong contrast in the image increases the feeling of drama and immediacy. But perhaps the most effective creative choice is that of the musical score. While there are four credited composers, it is excerpts from William Basinski’s iconic “The Disintegration Loops”, a rare audio work that manages to be both mournful and hopeful at the same time, that stand out and are used amply. At other times, the deep timbre of a cello or a double bass played with a bow adds to the intensity.

Closure is a Polish-French co-production staged by Braidmade Films and Warboys Films. Autlook Filmsales has the international rights.