A Closed Arrangement (Uklad Zamkniety) was inspired by the plight of Lech Jeziorny and Pawel Rey, two entrepreneurs from the southern city of Krakow who were imprisoned in 2003 under false charges.
The movie is being made by Ryszard Bugajski, who emigrated from communist Poland after his 1982 film Interrogation was banned by the then authorities (the film later won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes).
“It really is a picture about a battle between good and evil,” the director said of his latest venture, in an interview with the Rzeczpospolita daily.
Bugajski expanded that the movie concerns “the clash between officials... and ordinary people, who through their hard work and ingenuity are trying to build the new Poland.”
The director says the script draws on several cases in which the owners of private enterprises were arrested on false charges.
Bugajski co-wrote the film with Michal Pruski, author of the award-winning Black Thursday (Czarny Czwartek), a film that chronicled the crushing of workers’ riots in 1980.
A Closed Arrangement sees one of Poland’s most celebrated actors, Janusz Gajos, take the role of a state prosecutor.
However, Rzeczpospolita reports that the Polish Film Institute was unable to find funds to support Bugajski’s latest work, and that it is being backed by private investors, some of whom want to remain anonymous.
Bugajski had previously struggled to gain financial backing for a film about the Kielce pogrom, a 1946 massacre carried out by Poles against Jews.
However, his 2009 film about hanged resistance leader Emil Fieldorf (General Nil) received highly positive reviews, and a number of awards.
Bugajski is himself the recipient of the Order of Polonia Restituta, one of Poland’s highest honours.
The director insisted that the current film is not aimed at any particular government, as the “problem” was valid “under SLD, PiS, and now”, citing the left-wing, conservative-led and centre-right governments of the last decade.
According to Andrzej Sadowski from Transparency International Polska, the film will show “how little the mechanisms of power have changed,” since the fall of communism. (nh/jb)