Mug

Mug (Twarz, 2018) is a Polish drama from director Małgorzata Szumowska you can watch online on iFILM. Jacek is a loud, carefree metalhead from a small town. An accident at a construction site leaves him disfigured — and he becomes the first person in Poland to undergo a face transplant.

Medically, it works. Socially, it doesn't. The people who knew him don't know what to do with the face looking back at them. His family, the local church, the national press — everyone finds a different way to make his recovery about themselves. Szumowska shoots this as both tragedy and deadpan comedy, with Mateusz Kościukiewicz playing Jacek without a trace of self-pity. The man in the mirror isn't broken because he lost his face; he's broken because the world can't see past it.

The film took the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival. It's a deeply Polish film about a universal problem — identity, the body, and how much of yourself survives when everything visible has changed. Stream Mug (Twarz, 2018) online on iFILM.