Artur Wyrzykowski's This Is Not Happening, which competed in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival’s First Feature Competition, offers an unforgettable dive into a father and son’s relationship at peak crisis point. Enjoying its world premiere in the Estonian gathering, the movie explores the consequences of a murder whose perpetrator is revealed from the very beginning. In this sense, the narrative runs counter to traditional detective stories, first revealing to the audience who the killer is and then tracing back to uncover the reasons behind the crime, with a focus on the reaction to the event.

This fiction film sees renowned Polish actor Tomasz Schuchardt lending his body to the protagonist, Bartek. He’s the father of a young boy (Borys Otawa) who has just killed one of his classmates and the former immediately finds himself planning a way out to make sure his son doesn’t get caught. It won’t be easy, especially since his fiancée Maja (Paulina Gałązka) disagrees with the way he plans to orchestrate this escape.

Wyrzykowski's film deals with quite an interesting series of topics (such as dysfunctional parenthood, unjustified violence and the desire for redemption), but it could be argued that it’s mostly about a sense of a loss of stability. This notion is enhanced by the title, This Is Not Happening, which reflects the idea of us telling ourselves that what we’re seeing isn’t possible, that it’s not really happening to us. With this in mind, the script and film direction work well to portray the sense of growing fear and tension, which remains fairly steadfast throughout the film’s 75-minute runtime. Without a doubt, the film gets to the action quickly and takes enough time to build up the characters, despite developing the story relatively rapidly and within a short timeframe.

The film’s set-up is simple but effective. The script reveals elements of the story in a reasonable way, ensuring contact is maintained between the audience and the characters. The movie could be described as a tension-filled kammerspiel, relying on commendable production design by Joanna Hrisulidu.

There’s only one minor drawback which slightly detracts from the feature’s potency: Ernest Wilczyński’s cinematography is effective overall, and works well, especially towards the end of the film, but the first half hour isn’t as well-lit as the rest of the movie, feeling too bright and more amateurish. But this uneven aspect is the only real flaw with This Is Not Happening, which otherwise presents as a solid debut work. The layered storyline and the film’s powerful performances are the real core of its success, and it will please a vast number of viewers.

This Is Not Happening is a Polish production, courtesy of Bold Humans in league with Canal+ Poland, Wroclaw Film Studio, Coloroffon, Coolkeyplay and Lower Silesia Film Fund. World sales rights are still up for grabs.