Director Grzegorz Dębowski bolds the quote “Every fortune feeds on a fracture” through What Belongs to Others — a deceptive and exploitative presentation of the lengths one could go to blind everyone.
At its core, human life seems to be about gaining something — material stuff like money or a home, or emotional stuff like love and connection. The drive to reach out to others feels almost competitive, as if there’s a benefit to be had. Some go harder, deeper, and more all-in than others. Director Grzegorz Dębowski perceives the essence within the intention and makes his entry into the Venice Film Festival with that concept embedded in his film, What Belongs to Others — as direct and unambiguous as its title.
Kasia (Monika Sabina Kwiatkowska) is experiencing significant financial difficulty as she is unable to meet her rental obligations and faces repeated questioning from her landlord. Basically, she is uncertain how to proceed. Her partner is emotionally controlling and verbally abusive. Together, they engage in burglary, stealing valuables from residences and selling them for financial benefit. When her partner is arrested, Kasia escapes. She decides to stay in one of the apartments she had broken into — knowing that something dark and unspeakable had already happened there. Through thick and thin, she embarks on a deceitful journey to reclaim what she’s lost and mend her ways, slipping through the smallest opening possible for her own benefit.
The film’s main focus is the question of ‘belonging’ — who determines ownership and how that relationship is sustained. It further interrogates the unpredictable transfer of goods between hands. Dębowski situates this inquiry within real-world crises, including political division, socioeconomic disparity, and the pressures of social hierarchy, where such forces compel individuals, including Kasia, to pursue ethically questionable ends.
The film may be seen as a meditation on survival — specifically, the lengths to which one will go in its pursuit. The agreements struck are definitely incomplete, unjust in an already unjust world. However, the narrative, with the aid of streamlined editing (Anna Garncarczyk), invites reflection on past relationships, engaging with themes of collateral decision-making, collateral damage, and opportunism that bypasses reasoned thought.
But is it wise — this game of survival? How far will luck and nature bend toward a person’s darkest choices? Does hunger for the bare things unmake a mind? Can a life pressed between debt and abuse be forgiven its trespasses? Is this a perfect game — or just a broken one? How long can conscience hold under such weight? What does humanity say when things collapse? And what does it mean to take the place of the dead, to live in their absence, to build from what they left behind? The film does not merely pose these questions — it gives them breath, and they live inside us.
This 2026 Orizzonti entry opens like a kaleidoscope of dark opportunists turning every turn of the options into advantage. The game is deception, large and layered, feeding on the vulnerabilities scattered in the shadows. A dark trick, maybe — but a clever one. And empathy, always waiting, always ready, cannot be erased. It may be the most direct path through the thorns, the one way to reach something real.
What Belongs to Others is your doorstep to a convincing crime shaped through bewildering mazes. The film starts with politics, then turns inward, into empathy. Or, it is a study of how we reshape ourselves around what surrounds us, as dark as it gets, as easy as we need it to be, as strange as luck can turn.
The 83rd edition of the Venice International Film Festival is running on September 2-12, 2026.
