Side Roads

Directed by Julia Sokolnicka

The countryside of Poland from the perspective of a hitchhiker. Traveling around the country, the director recorded conversations with the drivers who share their thoughts, concerns about their own situation, their environment and of human nature. Among them is a woman who all of her life lived in the same village, never really going anywhere; a singer of “disco polo”, who spent a lot of time on the road; a baker, who has been baking bread for over 50 years and dreams about moving to Mazuria. These intimate portraits are confronted with an ugly, chaotic landscape, full of incongruous buildings and billboards.