14 year-old Dawid could become a judo champion, if it wasn’t for his short temper and aggression he finds hard to control. It’s the only legacy he has from his violent, imprisoned father. Dawid struggles to live up to his mother’s hopes for him while keeping an eye on his conniving 9 year-old brother. He gets a chance to turn his life around when he’s invited to an important judo tournament in Berlin. But will he have what it takes to seize this one-in-a-lifetime opportunity? Growing up is a universal theme, and the key to its fulfillment lies in reaching for the emotional truth. While trying to understand my heroes, I found myself asking a fundamental question – do we forever bear the marks of the place from which we came? Or could it be that we’re carrying within ourselves the prospect of change along with that stigma?

Maciej Sobieszczański is a director and a scriptwriter. He graduated from the Faculty of Theatre Knowledge at the Theatre Academy, and also from the Faculty of Screenwriting at Łódź Film School and Directing at Wajda School. He’s an author of several film scripts. His screenplay debut also happened to be a directorial debut of a prominent Ukrainian director and cinematographer Valentin Vasyanovich, winner of the Golden Lion for best film in the Horizon section at the Venice Film Festival (2019). Sobieszczański as a director debuted together with Łukasz Ronduda with the film “Performer”, a story from the borderland of the arts, whose main character was an authentic figure, the outstanding Polish artist Oskar Dawicki. The film had its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2015 and received the “Think: The Award” award. The film has been shown in the most important galleries around the world, including the Tate Modern in London. For his second film “Zgoda”/ “Reconciliation” he received the award for the best director at the 2017 Montreal IFF.

For 10 years he has been working in Wajda School as vice program director and lecturer, where, together with Wojciech Marczewski and Paweł Pawlikowski he co-creates a program for debuting directors – Development Lab. In 2010 he co-created the first stationary scriptwriting faculty in Poland, at Łódź Film School, where he also teaches.