A notorious miscarriage of justice is the subject of another debut feature, this time by Poland’s Jan Holoubek. Tomasz Komenda was framed by police and then sentenced to 25 years in prison for a rape-murder that he couldn’t possibly have committed. Holoubek’s telling of the story is solid festival fare, high on production value and performance, absorbing from start to finish. As Komenda, the weedy Piotr Trojan goes the distance in challenging the viewer’s sympathies, consistent with some other commendable choices made by the filmmakers. There are echoes of Peter Medak’s Let Him Have It and a real-life plot twist right out of The Shawshank Redemption, but 25 Years levels up the brutality on display, while dialling down the sentimentality, perhaps reflecting the lengths currently needed to fire up middle-class audiences in their generally fruitless rituals of liberal outrage. Another explanation, maybe less honourable, but preferred by me, is that Houlobek just really enjoys the pure movie mechanics of making us wince.

Stir, September 2021