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Agata Kulesza (“Ida”) and Bartosz Bielenia (“Corpus Christi”) will brace for “The Time That Never Came.”

The dystopian melodrama, set to premiere in 2026, will focus on a couple in a world obsessed with youth. Sara (Kulesza) chose to age naturally while Oskar, her partner, took an anti-aging treatment. Years later, when they reunite — divided by time but bound by the past — Sara begins a journey to reclaim lost love, confront buried emotions and find freedom.

Ed (Bielenia) is a calm and resourceful driver who helps Sara escape the Refuge. As they travel together to the City of Youth, unexpected events begin to shift her plans.

Kulesza, also known for “Green Border,” told Variety: “I truly hope we can create a universal story, one that invites reflection on where older people stand in today’s world and whether we’re placing far too much value on youth, which is, from the outset,...

Aga Woszczynska’s debut feature film Silent Land takes viewers to the sun-soaked shores of Sardinia, Italy. Released in 2022, the movie stars Agnieszka Zulewska and Dobromir Dymecki as Anna and Adam, a Polish couple seeking relaxation on their Italian getaway. But moments after arriving at their luxurious villa rental, cracks begin to emerge in their perfect vacation setup.

The pool, a centerpiece of their seaside retreat, is out of order. After negotiating with the landlord to have it repaired quickly, Anna and Adam settle back to leisurely days lounging by the water. Their response is disrupted by the arrival of a contractor, Rahim, tasked with fixing the problem.

As his work gets underway, a tragic accident throws the couple’s relationship into turmoil. Rahim takes a fall in the empty pool and doesn’t resurface. Anna and Adam look on, shocked yet removed from the emergency unfolding before them.

In Silent Land,...

Set in Poland in the year 1670, Netflix’s latest offering of the same name chronicles the account of Jan Pawel, a Polish nobleman. For as long as he could remember, Jan Pawel (Bartlomiej Topa) had only one dream: to go down in history as the most famous man in Poland. Jan had three children: Stanislaw (Michal Balicki), Jakub (Michal Sikorski), and Aniela (Martyna Byczkowska). As for his wife, Zofia (Katarzyna Herman), she wasn’t someone you would call to rejuvenate your boring party. She was more like the lost soul of a dead person, endlessly tormenting a man, as Jan Pawel stated on multiple occasions. They had very little in common except their shared hatred for their neighbor, Andrzej, who owned a bigger half of their village.

Spoilers Ahead

Why Did Jan Pawel Hate Andrzej?

Andrzej was just another landowner, like Jan Pawel, who wanted to raise the taxes given...

Aga Woszczynska’s incisive debut skewers guilt, desire and class for a vain pair of holidaymakers

Polish director Aga Woszczynska’s methodical and incisive debut feature offers a painterly study of guilt, desire and class, rendered in sky blues, terracotta tiles and white-people nude fabrics. Through an account of a holiday on an Italian island that goes wrong for extremely blond Polish couple Anna and Adam (Agnieszka Zulewska and Dobromir Dymecki), the script explores the chasms of cultural disconnection that lie beneath the tourism-industry fantasy of free-moving people of EU nations gaily traversing the continent in search of jollies.

Anna and Adam arrive at the spacious, secluded villa they’ve hired and are miffed to find the pool they were looking forward to using is empty. They complain to the unctuous manager (Marcello Romolo) who makes excuses and negotiates with the couple to have it fixed as quickly as possible...

"We did everything we could, right?" Modern Films in the UK has revealed an official UK trailer for Silent Land, a Polish drama set on an Italian island. This originally premiered at the 2021 Toronto Film Festival last year, and it has been showing at many fests including Zurich, Chicago, Göteborg, Thessaloniki, and at the New Horizons Film Festival in Poland. A perfect couple rents a holiday home on a sunny Italian island. The reality does not live up to their expectations when they find out the pool is broken. Ignorant of the fact that the island faces a water shortage, they ask to fix it. The presence of a stranger invades the couple's idea of safety and starts a chain of events, which makes them act irrationally, leading them to the darkest place in their relationship. The film stars Dobromir Dymecki, Agnieszka Żulewska, Jean Marc Barr, Alma Jodorowsky, and Marcello Romolo.

Dobromir Dymecki and Agnieszka Zulewska as Adam and Anna in Silent Land

Although Agnieszka Woszczynska and I have spent a few days arranging to meet to discuss her new film, Silent Land, which is screening as part of the Glasgow Film Festival, I’m honestly surprised that she makes it. It’s a very difficult time for her. She’s in Warsaw, which sits on a long road which runs east across the border with Ukraine. Somewhere along that road lies a column of Russian tanks, slowly moving westward. With friends in vulnerable situations, and not feeling very secure herself, she tells me that it’s hard to focus on promoting the film, but she seems to appreciate the distraction.

Though it focuses on just one couple and the decisions they make or fail to make after an accident at their holiday home, Silent Land is a film about big issues and,...

London-based Modern Films has bought U.K.-Ireland rights for “Silent Land,” the feature debut of Polish filmmaker Aga Woszczyńska, which played in competition at the recently wrapped Zurich Film Festival. Variety has been given exclusive access to the film’s international trailer.

Set in Italy, the slow-burn drama follows a couple whose summer holiday goes terribly wrong when Rahim (Ibrahim Keshk), an illegal immigrant hired to fix the pool in the house they paid for, suddenly dies. Produced by Lava Films, Kino Produzioni and I/O Post, with world sales handled by New Europe Film Sales, the film had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival.

Speaking to Variety ahead of the Zurich fest, Woszczyńska described the refugee crisis at the heart of her film as a “present-day plague.” “I would like for ‘Silent Land’ to make people more socially sensitive and not just close themselves off in their homes,...

Polish filmmaker Aga Woszczyńska – together with co-writer Piotr Litwin – started to work on the script of her first feature film “Silent Land” in 2016, and notes that since then, her film – which centers on the world’s response to migrants – has sadly become even more timely.

Set in Italy, the slow-burning drama sees a couple whose summer holiday goes terribly wrong when Rahim (Ibrahim Keshk), an illegal immigrant hired to fix the pool in the house they paid for, suddenly dies. But Woszczyńska views her film as a humanistic rather than a political statement.

“I don’t want to blame just Italy, but the whole of Europe. The whole world, which stays silent,” she tells Variety.

“When Afghanistan desperately needs our help, we are closing our eyes and our borders – just like [my characters] Adam and Anna. What is currently happening, the whole situation on the Polish-Belarusian border, it’s something worse than barbarism,...

Desperate for respite from their bourgeois lives in Poland, Adam (Dobromir Dymecki) and Anna (Agnieszka Zulewska) decide to vacation on a tiny Italian island. They wanted a big house with a pool and scenic view to get the most alone time possible. While a genial local (Marcello Romolo’s Fabio) promised exactly that, the pool is found empty and in disarray. He offers a discount. They refuse. He offers a free dinner at his trattoria in town. They explain that food won’t fix anything. Only when Adam asks Fabio what the problem is—considering the damage looks like a two-day job at most—does he agree to hire someone to make things right. A jackhammer wakes Anna the next morning.

First-time feature director Agnieszka Woszczynska (who co-wrote with Piotr Litwin) ensures this couple’s entitlement is on full display from the start of Silent Land. Anna packs the fridge with alcohol.

After roiling a Polish village as an impostor priest in Oscar-nominated “Corpus Christi,” star Bartosz Bielenia tries to rattle the entire nation in “Prime Time.” His character here is another malcontent, this one armed and ready to take over a TV studio on New Year’s Eve with a special message for the world. But he’s a bit too literally a rebel without a cause: We never discover just what this protagonist’s protesting gripe is. That lack makes director Jakub Piatek and co-writer Lukasz Czapski’s first feature a familiar hostage drama whose anticipated narrative raison d’etre is strangely Mia. The slick, watchable but ultimately somewhat pointless results, which premiered at Sundance six months ago, launch worldwide on Netflix June 30.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1999 at a Krakow network affiliate, and despite the Y2K fears glimpsed on other stations’ broadcasts, just another night’s labor for the staff here.