Monika Pawluczuk

The Mayan doomsday prophecy looms over a dark night in Poland. A late-night radio host takes in calls from citizens expressing their concerns, predictions and speculations on what may happen when—or even if—the sun comes up. Simultaneously, a crisis centre dispatcher fields panicked calls from people experiencing real-life traumatic situations in need of immediate attention. The voices of these callers are interwoven with an intimate therapy session and a wandering taxicab to build a profile of a place where citizens want to be heard. Never showing the callers on the other end of the line, the film creates an aural overview of a darkened city. As the night progresses, the calls continue coming in, revealing the various struggles people are experiencing in dealing with conceptual fears and current woes—all in a world that soon may be over.

She would like to return as a little bird in the next life, small enough to hide. Right now she still lives in a bird cage, at the mercy of the whims of a fate that transported her and her family from Myanmar to a refugee village in the Thai jungle. The rain drums ceaselessly on the roof. The torrential river in front of the house is as powerful as the suppressed feelings of a woman who gave birth to 12 children and lost some of them. She hasn’t chosen her husband; moreover, he sometimes flies away. Now she only hopes that her daughter will follow.