Silent Trees
When her mother dies in the forest on the Polish-Belarusian border, a 16-year-old Kurdish girl Runa has to quickly grow up to take care of her 4 younger brothers and helpless, depressed father. The family deals with trauma in a refugee camp and tries to establish a new life in Poland. Runa's greatest fear is being forced to return to Iraq, where Kurds face the threat of ISIS. She wants to live like her newfound European friends and become a lawyer. But just as her dream of going back to school comes true, another threat appears – the threat of deportation. Runa finds escape from everyday problems in a sketchbook filled with drawings that express what she feels. The film is a moving coming of age story in the times of the global refugee crisis.
Agnieszka Zwiefka is an award-winning filmmaker. Her films The Queen of Silence (2014) and Scars (2020) were screened at festivals worldwide. Zwiefka creates films that border between documentary and fiction, balancing reality and fantasy. She is a member of European Film Academy and alumna of workshops Dok.Incubator, ScripTeast, Nipkow Programme and Berlinale Talents as well as Meryl Streep’s and Nicole Kidman’s The Writers Lab.
