A young woman travels to Warsaw from a poor region in eastern Poland to find a job. Her cousin takes her in, letting her stay in his tiny apartment. He introduces her to a friend of his with whom he devises various schemes that allow them to survive. The woman first attempts to become accepted within this closed circle, and later leaves for a different city in search of work. After a while, she is rejoined by her two friends, and the three of them travel to the seaside.

Based on the framework of Jim Jarmusch‘s „Stranger than Paradise“, we imported this story of exile to Poland twenty years later. We followed the original film‘s scheme in order to better expose the historical shift which has taken place. In the 1984 film, a Hungarian woman discovered the American way of life as she stayed with her cousin in New York; this time, a young woman from a village in Eastern Poland comes to Warsaw in search of work and resides with her cousin. The schism between two divergent cultural models now plays itself out within one society. The scenes – autonomous, but chronological sequence shots – are set in today‘s Poland, echoing the original settings in New York, Cleveland and Florida: a modest apartment in the Foksal district, a few streets in the suburb, the countryside flashing by during a car trip, and the Baltic Sea. Societal mutations are revealed to us in snatches, as we stay close to the three protagonists, who live in a closed circle even though they pretend to be part of the surrounding reality. In Jarmusch‘s film, the plot was already an alibi to reflect upon a model of life as a threesome. Importing this model into the present context of a former Soviet bloc country, even asking our actors to take on postures similar to those of the anti-heroes of „Stranger…“: this was our gamble, for we wished to sow confusion as to the need for defining oneself through an identity. We aimed at an improbable road movie in which the escapade to the sea is by no means a fruitful dream and in which the intimacy shared by three, portrayed as a non-prescriptive model, exposes each character‘s reluctance to break away from pre-established roles. With „Revival…“, we pursue our critique of the myth of authenticity, with just the slightest air of tenderness rising above reference models.