The last thing I saw at the 2015 Camerimage Film Festival was Jerzy Skolimowski‘s 11 Minutes, which I was fortunate enough to enter with almost no pre-existing knowledge of. The surprise, shock, and joy that came from this experience were all strong enough for me to recommend a) the film and b) entering said film with a similar lack of awareness.
This, of course, means you’d be best-served avoiding everything until it arrives in just two weeks — including a U.S. trailer that gives away particulars of its amazing climax. (Just don’t click play! It’s that easy!) Or perhaps you’ll end up disliking it as much as our critic out of Venice, who said, “An emperor’s new clothes of technical virtuosity, veteran Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski’s latest is a frenetic, kinetic, but largely insipid speed through the lives of ostensibly random people in modern day Warsaw. Set under the titular 11-minute period, the film’s pitfalls lie in the style-over-substance route that has befallen many films that have such an annoyingly gimmicky framing device at its center.”
See the preview below (via Apple):
Synopsis:
In the span of eleven tense minutes, a whirlwind of interlocking tales of life in the surveillance age unfold in this stylish, propulsive thriller from acclaimed director Jerzy Skolimowski (Deep End, Essential Killing). In a city square in Warsaw, a sleazy film director “auditions” a married actress in a hotel room; a hot dog vendor goes about his work while concealing a dark secret; a motorcycle-driving drug runner trysts with a client’s wife; and a young man plots an ill-advised robbery. Mixing sleek cinematography with footage from webcam, smartphone, and CCTV cameras, 11 Minutes masterfully lays out the pieces of a puzzle and then brings them together in an explosive climax.
11 Minutes will enter a limited release and hit iTunes on April 8.