A sunny family holiday is rocked by emotional storms in Fucking Bornholm, Polish writer-director Anna Kazejak’s tragicomic depiction of modern marriage and midlife disenchantment. Making its international premiere as a competition contender in Karlovy Vary film festival this week, Kazejak’s third feature is a classy exercise in social observation, finely crafted and acerbic in tone, though there are warmer currents beneath its icy surface. Universal themes, witty script and high production values all add up to decent art-house potential after the film completes its festival run. Following domestic release in May, world sales are being handled by UK-based agency Film Republic.
A Polish couple in their early forties, Maja (Agnieszka Grochowska) and Hubert (Maciej Stuhr), are on a spring break to Bornholm, a Danish holiday island nestled between Sweden and Poland. Accompanying them is recently divorced Dawid (Grzegorz Damiecki), who is both a long-time friend of Hubert and former lover of Maja, plus his new younger partner Nina (Jasmina Polak) and three pre-teen boys from both families. These old college contemporaries have a long tradition of visiting Bornholm, pitching their tents and parking their caravans on the same idyllic beachside camp site overlooking the Baltic Sea.
But this year’s holiday proves to be different, taking a dark turn on the first night following an incident of sexually inappropriate behavior between the three boys, which only reveals itself later in faltering, shameful, conflicting accounts. While Maja struggles with how best to manage the tensions this rupture creates, for the adults as well as the children, Hubert seems more concerned with maintaining a happy family façade, Meanwhile, Dawid is terrified his ex-wife will find out, worsening their already fractious post-divorce relationship.
Building like a slow-motion tidal wave, this crisis ripples outwards from children to parents, exposing awkward secrets and hidden faultlines between the couples. The biggest impact is on Maja, who is forced to assume a kind of prime parental responsibility for the whole group. In turn, this leads her reassess her life choices, her moral priorities, and her marriage to Hubert.
Maja finds herself at a crossroads, torn between swallowing the disappointment and compromise of long-term family life or running away, lured by the temptation of a possible affair with a rugged Danish local (Magnus Krepper). In the final hours of the holiday, a frantic rush to catch the boat back to Poland becomes a kind of symbolic ultimatum between Maja and Hubert, each testing the other’s loyalty to their shaky shared future.
Films about dysfunctional families forced to face ugly home truths on hellish holidays is almost an established genre in its own right, with Poland and Scandinavia as masters of the form. Featuring a male protagonist who seems to care more about his expensive bicycle than his sexually abused son, Fucking Bornholm certainly has echoes of dark-hearted satires like Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (2014) or Agnieszka Woszczynska’s Silent Land (2021).
But Kazejak and her co-writer Filip Kasperaszek are a little more merciful in their worldview, seeking not to skewer the bourgeoisie, more to gently roast them with an empathetic insider’s eye. All the adults in this bittersweet psychodrama are selfish and flawed but not especially malicious. In his key speech, as his marriage teeters on the edge of collapse, a tearful Hubert cautions against “the dangerous notion that people can be perfect.” For all its blunt title and caustic tone, Fucking Bornholm treats its protagonists as plausibly weak-willed souls with relatable problems. This is arguably both a strength and weakness, heightening the film’s emotional sophistication but softening its satirical bite.
The performances in Fucking Bornholm are generally high-calibre, especially Grochowska’s glowering study in repressed rage, lending subtle shading to an emotional-crescendo character arc that could have tipped into histrionic caricature. Visually, the film looks terriifc in that precise, elegant, classically Polish way. Kazejak and her cinematographer Jakub Stolecki shoot the island backdrop with a crisp, luminous beauty, from golden beach sunsets to painterly vistas of misty seascapes. Jerzy Rogiewicz’s chamber-pop score, all stabbing piano motifs and galloping tempo, sharpens the sense of mounting panic.
Venue: Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Crystal Globe competition)
Director: Anna Kazejak
Screenplay: Filip Kasperaszek, Anna Kazejak
Cast: Agnieszka Grochowska, Maciej Stuhr, Grzegorz Damiecki, Jasmina Polak, Magnus Krepper
Cinematography: Jakub Stolecki
Editing: Maciej Pawlinski
Music: Jerzy Rogiewicz
Producer: Marta Lewandowska
Production: Friends With Benefits Studio (Poland)
World sales: Film Republic (UK)
In Polish, English, Danish
96 minutes
