A Short Film About Killing

Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski

1988 / 85min / DCP

Expanded, like the following year’s A Short Film About Love, from one of the episodes of his Dekalog (Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder), A Short Film About Killing stars Mirosław Baka as Jacek, an antisocial and quite possibly psychotic drifter newly arrived in Warsaw whose taste for wanton cruelty finds expression in the brutal and senseless murder of a middle-aged taxicab driver (Jan Tesarz), and puts Jacek on a trajectory towards death row. Released as a spirited public debate concerning capital punishment was ongoing in Poland, Kieślowski’s hard-to-shake film—unsparing in its depiction of violence—is a full-throated indictment of state-sponsored murder.

Distributor: Janus Films

Part of Moral Mazes of Krzysztof Kieślowski