Synopsis
A Short Film About Killing (Krótki film o zabijaniu, 1988) is Krzysztof Kieślowski's Jury Prize-winning drama at Cannes — watch it online on iFILM. Expanded from an episode of his Dekalog series, it tracks three men through Warsaw whose lives converge around a single act of violence.
Jacek is an aimless young man drifting through the city with no apparent purpose. A middle-aged taxi driver circles the same streets in a haze of contempt. A newly qualified lawyer still believes in the justice system he has just joined. Their paths cross in a sequence that Kieślowski films without cutting away — prolonged, physical, deliberately hard to sit through. Then the state carries out its own version of the same act.
Cinematographer Sławomir Idziak shot Warsaw through filters that drain the colour to a sickly yellow-green; the city looks diseased before anyone dies. Kieślowski's argument — that lawful execution and murder are morally identical — is made through image and structure, not dialogue. Stream A Short Film About Killing (1988) online on iFILM.
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