Danusia and Basia are a mother and daughter, sharing a life presented by director Karol Pałka as supremely secluded. Far removed from any comfort, the seasons pass, a priest comes to visit, the women wade through mud and cultivate their habits. But, unnoticed by Danusia, Basia moves on a few back roads of her own that lead in other directions.

The nearest town seems light years away. Danusia and her daughter Basia lead a reclusive life in a ramshackle house in the country. The rooms are decorated with flower arrangements, scattered with devotional objects. Mother and daughter cultivate their connection to the supernatural, either in the shape of a strict Catholicism or as small rituals in nature. In one scene Basia dances around a fire like a witch. She is also the one who repeatedly seeks contact with the outside world. We see her with a mobile phone then, but the person at the other end remains intangible, unable or unwilling to break the spell around the mother-and-daughter team. It is a dense, almost deserted world which Karol Pałka in his debut film renders in gloomy, shadowed images that grow brighter only when spring comes. But even then, the dramatic opening piece “Specially for You” by the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha still resonates.

The whole world, captured on a somewhat dreary pavement in Warsaw. For two years, director Paweł Łoziński stood on the balcony of his flat with his camera and watched the people passing below from up there. The ones he saw and persuaded to talk are young and old, neighbours or simply passers-by. The filmmaker addresses them, asks questions, listens and creates a space for conversations that rarely happen between strangers.

How do passers-by react when they are filmed from a balcony and addressed, stopped from above? Do they walk on, shaking their heads? Or are they willing to engage in dialogue? This place and this staged opportunity seem perfect for making a film that reflects its own premises, because apparently people feel a rather strong need to talk about themselves from this unusual position. Whether hurrying or strolling, happy or thoughtful, posing or quite natural: Each of the participants who happen to come into view reveals something special. Every encounter, however unpremeditated, turns out to be unique. Some expectations of a certain type of person are disappointed, because hardly anyone can be pigeonholed. Łoziński’s experiment invites us to pause, to wait until the world steps into the camera’s field of view.