Refining fires

In the isolated Polish countryside of the 1950s, seventeen-year-old Jadzia, scarred by a fire, seeks self-acceptance through drawings. When her fanatically religious mother takes away her only refuge, Jadzia turns faith itself into an act of rebellion.

  • Tola Meyer
    Director
  • Julia Błach
    Writer
  • Maciej Ślesicki
    Producer
    Oscar nominated: 'Our Curse' & "The Dress'
  • Warsaw Film School
    Producer
  • Aleksandra Rykowska
    Key Cast
  • Barbara Wysocka
    Key Cast
  • Piotr Michnik
    Cinematography
  • Karol Konopka
    Editing
  • Piotr Michnik
    Editing
  • Filip Kral
    Sound
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Student
  • Runtime:
    13 minutes 24 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 31, 2026
  • Country of Origin:
    Poland
  • Country of Filming:
    Poland
  • Language:
    Polish
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Black & White
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Warsaw Film School
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Tola Meyer

Tola Meyer is a pink-haired director from Toruń who moved to Warsaw at the age of eighteen to pursue her passion for cinema. Together with cinematographer Piotr Michnik, she co-founded the production house blenda w kadrze, where they create short films and music videos driven by a strong visual language. She combines her love of filmmaking with an interest in ethnography, which often leads her to work on costume-based projects. Her greatest ambition is to create a feature film intertwined with ethnological materials.

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Director Statement

Since childhood, I have spent my summers in the Polish countryside, in my great-grandparents’ house - a place that still looks as if it were frozen in the 1950s. That space always felt strangely magical to me, filled with silence, tension, and untold stories. As a child, I imagined the lives that might have unfolded within those walls, the emotions absorbed by the house itself. This fascination became the starting point for Jadzia’s story.

Jadzia is a seventeen-year-old girl growing up under the weight of a deeply traumatized parent. While the film is rooted in a specific historical and religious context, its emotional core lies in intergenerational trauma - a universal experience that transcends time and place. I am interested in portraying the brutality of adolescence shaped by fear, control, and distorted forms of care. This film explores coming of age as a painful process, often unfolding without language, safety, or understanding.

I am a filmmaker who thinks primarily in images. For this story to resonate with me, it needed to exist within a precisely defined world. Paradoxically, this historical setting allows the film to speak more directly to contemporary audiences, translating emotions and metaphors into a modern perspective. I find this process - of shaping inner experience through visual language - deeply compelling and central to my creative practice.