In Fledglings (Pisklaki), veteran documentarian Lidia Duda delivers a heartbreaking and inspiring story on pure souls and humanity through visually impaired and blind children who learn how to live in an untasted world without their parents.
With the sidebar section, Semaine de la critique celebrated its 32nd anniversary at the 75th Locarno Film Festival, we’re lucky to discover Fledglings by Lidia Duda which originally premiered in May at Docs Against Gravity Film Festival 2022 in Poland, where it scooped three awards; and during the international premiere in Locarno, it won The Marco Zucchi award for the most innovative documentary from an aesthetic-formal point of view.
The film opens with the main subject, expressive seven-year-old girl Zosia playing with her mother by the lake in a two minutes scene that will be describing her emotions and the whole story; “Now I’ll try to stand without anyone’s help”; “I’m too scared of staying alone”; “Who can help me?”; and “What am I going to do when you’re gone?”, then Fledglings plunges us into a special needs school where Zosia met sensitive Oskar and independently minded Kinga in order to learn anything with the help of their teachers, but being away from our parents, especially if you are in the same situation as these three children, must be hard. Zosia befriends with her classmates and learns to respect each other’s emotions, yet sometimes she can’t handle herself. During these hard moments, they found closeness and love.
Through intimate explorations, Fledglings take the viewer on a saddening journey to the world of children’s compassion, artistic expression, and sense of humor. These three children have their unique and strong characters to express themselves, and director Lidia Duda never fails to show their emotions, thanks to DoPs Wojciech Staron and Zuzanna Zachara-Hassairi’s stark-contrast-black-and-white frames. The camera sticks to its protagonist, and mainly focuses on their faces in close-up shots. Through this approach, the director and her DoPs have been able to show us their deepest emotions. It seems Duda didn’t want t show us more about the school building, we never see the entire school or even a single room where the children took classes, by keeping her cameras pointed at their faces, an intimacy was built between her subjects and her viewers.
This is a sweet and touching portrayal of survival, an emphatic yet inspiring study of three Polish visually impaired and blind children going to a boarding school; learning something, making connections, and finding another love.
Lidia Duda previously worked on various short and medium-length documentaries, this is her first full-length project. Fledglings was produced by Aura Films and in co-productions with TVP S.A, LunaFilm, and Mazovia Warsaw Film Commission.
