Photosensitive Review (2026 Kinoteka Polish Film Festival)
A warm, visually assured, charming debut.
In many ways, Photosensitive is a perfectly traditional boy-meets-girl romance. Robert (Ignacy Liss) is a celebrated photographer who has retreated into the safety of his carefully constructed career following an unspecified family tragedy. Agata (Matylda Giegzno) is fearless, sharp-witted and works with troubled youth. She’s also blind, a fact that’s central to the story. Their paths cross, their defences come down, and the rest follows a familiar arc, with some distinctive twists on the genre that defy the more well-established conventions Richard Curtis has cemented in the public consciousness.
Director Tadeusz Śliwa, best known in Poland for his music video work, brings a visual fluency to the film that elevates its quieter moments considerably. This could easily have produced something slick but hollow, but Śliwa largely avoids that trap. The cinematography is consistently striking, with his eye for composition and light lending the romance a warmth and texture that feels earned rather than cosmetic. The chemistry between Giegżno and Liss is believable and regularly charming — a scene on a bus where the two dissolve into laughter together is the kind of effortlessly natural moment that many bigger films spend a lot of money failing to achieve. A sequence in which Robert takes Agata driving in an empty car park is quietly lovely, a unique brand of unglamorous intimacy that sticks with you. It’s also great to report that the film contains a silent disco sequence — there are precious few references to these in cinema, and this one is handled with genuine joy.
The film won the Audience Award at the Mastercard OFF Camera Festival in Kraków, and it’s not difficult to see why. It’s warm and inventive, and its heart is obviously in the right place. It excels in showing how even the most well-intentioned people can act like idiots around the disabled — there’s one scene where Agata is effectively frogmarched across the street by a well-meaning passerby insisting on ‘helping’ her when the help is anything but, and it’s brilliantly recognisable. Another scene at a party where Robert’s friends can only focus on her disability feels especially apt too.
Where Photosensitive stumbles is that it sometimes seems uncertain about what it actually wants to say beyond the love story itself. Is it to show that love transcends disability? If so, Robert’s ableism, especially in the third act, where it becomes a key plot device, feels worthy of further examination and suggests a sharper, more probing film lurking inside this one. Robert is intrigued by how Agata experiences the world, and that’s generally fine and well-executed, but his insistence against her will that she try to find a way to retrieve her sight through a newly developed surgical procedure isn’t exactly about to endear us to him. The subplot involving Robert’s family tragedy arrives towards the end and dissipates without adding much, and a scene in which one character attempts suicide is introduced and then largely dropped, as though the film remembered it had somewhere else to be. The cumulative effect is of a movie that gestures toward difficult territory and then retreats to the warmer comfort of the central romance.
Fortunately, that romance is a genuinely engaging one. Photosensitive is a film that earns its emotions honestly, and Śliwa has announced himself as a genuine talent, capable of directing two brilliant leads and telling a provoking story. Bolstered by two strong leads and a director with a genuine eye, Photosensitive is a warm-hearted and frequently delightful romance. It could have gone deeper, but for now, it’s a very promising start.
★★★
Screened at Kinoteka Polish film Festival on March 1st, UK Cinemas from 20th March / Matylda Giegzno, Ignacy Liss / Dir: Tadeusz Śliwa / Wonder Films, Telewizja Polska (TVP), Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej / 15
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