Undefeated

What most interests me are questios of power,says Marek Drążewski when summarizing his creative work in the foreword to Undefeated, a documentary at whose core is an examination of the mechanisms necessary to exercise repressive political control. The director follows social unrest as it unfolded in the city of Poznań in 1956, giving voice both to the workers who took to the streets and the police personnel who faced the dilemma of either supporting the state or defending the people. Initially a strike for better wages, the protests became a social movement that met with brutal repression, which claimed dozens of lives, including that of a young boy. The rhetoric of a workers’ state did little to mask the cynicism of those in power.