Closure

davidehrlich3.5

On the morning of May 27, 2023, 16-year-old Krzysztof Dymiński snuck out of his family home around 4am, took a bus to Warsaw, and walked to the center of the Gdański Bridge that stretches across the Vistula River. A rotating CCTV camera watched him stand there — motionlessly staring at the water — for 20 minutes until it swiveled away. When the camera returned its attention less than a minute later, Krzysztof was gone. No one on Earth has verifiably seen him since. A shiv-like final snapshot notwithstanding, no images of Krzysztof — or “Chris,” as he was called by those who knew him — are used in Michał Marczak’s haunting and heartsick new film about his disappearance. No school pictures. No social media. No home videos from happier days, now tinged with the ominousness of a tragedy in the making. “Closure” might affect the posture of a true-crime documentary in its opening minutes (during which Chris’ father, Daniel, hurls a headless dummy off the exact spot of the bridge where his son vanished so that he can follow it downstream with an eye towards finding a body), but Marczak’s long-awaited follow-up to 2016’s “All These Sleepless Nights” is much less interested in solving a mystery than it is in the anguish of letting one go. An ultra-immersive portrait of grief, acceptance, and the role that hope can play in delaying them both, “Closure” soon eschews any familiar genre tropes in favor of following Daniel as he obsessively charts — and plumbs — the shores of the Vistula in search of answers. Well, not answers so much as proof of his most logical assumptions. ~this review continues on IndieWire~

Robert Daniels4.0

This might be one of the more sobering, grounded portraits of grief I’ve ever seen.

Matt Neglia4.0

CLOSURE often feels like a finely crafted narrative feature in its moody cinematography, immersive sound design (with a droning score that sounds a lot like “Conclave” at times), and deliberate structure, following a father’s search along the Vistula River for any trace of his missing son. Director Michał Marczak turns the river into a haunting space between hope and despair, capturing how grief can sustain and slowly consume. The investigation becomes repetitive at times, stretching longer than expected, yet that persistence mirrors Daniel’s mounting frustration and emotional exhaustion as the search for his son continues, even if it inspires others who have lost their loved ones as well. Somber and patient, this is a contemplative portrait of loss that isn’t built for mainstream true-crime junkies as it doesn’t seek to entertain or provide any easy answers. It’s for that reason, I found myself really affected by it.