UK/Scottish premieres; presented with an online Q&A with Solaris Mon Amour director Kuba Mikurda
Wheelchair accessible* | English subtitles | Pay-what-you-can tickets (£2–12)
If the ticket or other costs, such as childcare or transport, make this screening unaffordable, please see details of our Audience Access Fund.
Borscht Film Club, presenting the finest Polish cinema in Glasgow and Edinburgh, invites you to a special double screening of Solaris Mon Amour and Grandmamauntsistercat — two hypnotic archival essay films that reimagine found footage as a medium of emotional and ideological resistance.
Solaris Mon Amour, directed by Kuba Mikurda, is a poetic meditation on grief and memory, inspired by Stanisław Lem’s philosophical sci-fi novel Solaris. Constructed from over 70 educational films and radio adaptations from the 1960s, the film dissolves boundaries between fiction, documentary, and personal reflection. Rather than retelling Lem’s story, it evokes its emotional undercurrents: the impossibility of closure, the persistence of memory, and the haunting presence of the past. Visual textures and sonic layers intertwine to create a trance-like atmosphere of cosmic longing and psychological depth.
Preceding Solaris Mon Amour is Grandmamauntsistercat by Zuza Banasińska — a found footage film that reclaims matriarchal narratives from the archives of the Educational Film Studio in Łódź. Told through the eyes of a child, the film grapples with ideological systems and gender binaries embedded in communist-era educational materials. Baba Jaga, the Slavic witch, is reimagined as a prehistoric goddess, inciting layered reflections on kinship, identity, and resistance. The women in the family find home within the archive, transforming patriarchal and anthropocentric images into tools of freedom and self-making.
Both films share a commitment to reworking archival materials into poetic, emotionally resonant essays. They challenge dominant narratives and invite viewers to reflect on how memory, ideology, and representation shape our inner lives. This pairing offers a unique opportunity to experience two visionary approaches to found footage cinema — one cosmic, one familial, both deeply personal.
Content notes: grief, mourning, and emotional trauma, brief imagery of insects, worms, and animal cruelty, close ups of bodily fluids
Access notes: archival footage with variable image and sound quality, abstract soundscapes, flickering visuals and flashing lights
Curated by Agnieszka Koperniak-Kerr and Dylan Beck
* Please note, The Lower Hall at the Pyramid at Anderston is wheelchair accessible through a ramp at a side entrance. There are 9 steps between the level where it is located and the rest of the venue, meaning that to make way to the accessible toilet or other parts of the building, wheelchair users will need to re-enter via the main entrance. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.