Spital zur Wandlung

This is undoubtedly one of the most profound and brilliant Polish films, directed by the acclaimed filmmaker Edward Zebrowski (1935-2014) and based on a novel by a survivor of the Holocaust, Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006). It is, first of all, a deeply moving and terrifying portrayal of the cruel and absurd world of a mental hospital. Merciless in its depiction of the psychiatric staff and their methods, this much too little known film can be rightly seen as a crushing indictment of authoritarian psychiatry and compared to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". The scene where a young doctor openly denounces the methods of his colleagues and questions the very concept of mental illness is strikingly reminiscent of the writings of (among others) Erving Goffman and Thomas Szasz.

Not less importantly, this film - possibly uniquely in the history of world cinema - offers a haunting and blood-curdling vision of the Nazi genocide of psychiatric patients. At the same time, it provides an unrivalled image of the degradation and later extermination of a large part of the Polish intelligentsia by Nazi Germany.