CAPO - filmPOLSKA 2026

CAPO is one of seven entries in the competition at the 21st edition of filmPOLSKA, which takes place from September 9 to 16 in Berlin and Potsdam. Robert Kwilman will be present at the screening.

CAPO / PERMIT

PL 2025
90 min, Original with German subtitles & English subtitles
Dir.: Robert Kwilman
Screenplay: Robert Kwilman, Malwina Górecka, Kirk Kjeldsen
Cinematography: Kasper Lorek
Sound: Ming-Wei Chiang
Cast: Daniel Felipe Jimenez Vaquez, Ivan Sharan, Josiana Costales, Justa Beatriz Blanco Rojas, Alejandra Herrera, Victor Venecia Fuentes, Gerson Isai Lam Lopez, Sebastian Stankiewicz, Michał Balicki, and others

A group of women and men from Latin America is driven in a small bus to an unknown location in the Polish countryside. There, they are presented with contracts written in a language they do not understand, in which the $3,500 promised back home has suddenly turned into 3,500 złoty. Worse still: they have to hand over their passports, and instead of working in a hotel, these contracts bind them to monotonous, grueling work in a meat-processing plant. They’re also fleeced for money to pay for the shabby dormitory, and workplace safety is a foreign concept. What was planned as a stay to earn money soon feels like a prison with forced labor.

Robert Kwilman breathes new life into social cinema à la Ken Loach and skillfully employs its techniques. In the style of a documentary—with a shaky handheld camera, no music, and no artificial lighting—he brings us as close as possible to the film’s tragic heroes, who soon ask themselves: Should they silently endure this blatant injustice, rebel, or flee? Without sugarcoating anything, Kwilman portrays a Poland that has transformed from a country of emigration to one of immigration, with all its dark sides. [Rainer Mende]