Reception youth based on the films of Krzysztof Zanussi and John Komasa

Abstract

The text is an approximation to the question of a reception of youth in Krzysztof Zanussi’s and Jan Komasa’s movies. The selection of directors aimed to show the image of a young from different time’s and generation’s perspectives. It made possible to select main tendencies connected with a young stage of life over years. At the beginning the text recalls the work of one of the so called Cinema of moral anxiety’s creators – Krzysztof Zanussi. The content shown in his movies, such as is Illumination, shows the image of young intellectuals. Their contemporary generation identified themselves with this group, looking for the truth and the sense of life in a mendacious reality of communist Poland. The fact that the Zanussi observation are still up­‑to­‑date is confirmed in Sala samobójców by a director that belongs to a young generation of moviemakers – Jan Komasa, who depicted the nowadays teenagers. The movie shows that the form of youthful quests changed in a significant manner, and that together with a changing world, new dangers appeared.