These Villages Are No More

About the film

While browsing through the family archives, Rebeka Goldman, who has always lived in New York, learns that somewhere in distant Poland, in the Kazimierz district of Kraków, there is a house left by her grandmother who was forced to escape during the war.

Puzzled by the suddenly discovered mysterious, fascinating past, even more than by the will to regain her lost estate, the heroine lands at Balice Airport and begins her sentimental journey into the unknown.

The staged musical spectacle entitled “Tych miasteczek nie ma już” (“These villages are no more”), produced under the tutelage of the excellent Kraków director, Grzegorz Styła, seems to blast out the narrow framework of a short film and aspire towards a full-length musical film, right from the first scenes.

As befits a musical production, the film constitutes also (and maybe most importantly) a canvas to present beautiful and piercing Jewish songs sung by the leading heroine (Ewa Warta-Śmietana) – both in traditional and modern styles created by Leopold Kozłowski, for the lyrics written by Jacek Cygan and Wojciech Młynarski and others. The whole musical side of the production was made with a select cast composed of outstanding Kraków musicians, who have been imbedded in the traditions of Kazimierz for many years, frequently performing in the same places where they ‘act’ before film cameras.