Directed and written by Kinga Michalska
Produced by Danae Elon, Paul Cadieux and Ashley Duong
Bedrock draws a psychological portrait of Poland from the perspective of Poles living on Holocaust sites today. This observational documentary is a quiet and subtle journey through a land where bones of the victims and the architecture of extermination are intimately intertwined with the protagonists’ lives. A little girl visits her friend in a psychiatric hospital that was once a concentration camp. A young Polish Jew takes on an impossible task of rescuing the remains of Jewish victims from destruction across the country. A Catholic family argues about Polish complicity in the pogrom in their small town as its annual commemoration approaches. Soccer fans from the village of Birkenau celebrate a victory of their local team. As we follow protagonists navigating many spaces of trauma in their daily routines, layers of identity, memory and complicity are slowly revealed. Poles are at once as victims, witnesses but also perpetrators. The film examines echoes of the violent past to confront the dystopian present.
CANADA | 2025 | 95 minutes | Polish and English with English subtitles
Kinga Michalska / Director and Writer
Kinga Michalska is a Polish queer visual artist and filmmaker based in Tiohtiá:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. Their work examines issues of memory, identity, displacement, and things that haunt us. They are interested in the periphery of who and what makes history. They hold a BA in Cultural Studies from the University of Warsaw and an MFA in Photography from Concordia University. Their work has been shown in multiple exhibitions and film festivals in Canada, Poland, UK, Korea, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. Bedrock is their debut feature documentary.
Danae Elon / Producer
Danae Elon has been living and working as a director and producer in Montreal Quebec for the last ten years. Born in Israel her films have been an attempt to tell stories about the Occupation through a deeply personal point of view. Every film she has made has tried to search for truth, hypocrisy and injustice through intimate storytelling often focusing on her own family and the city she grew up in: Jerusalem. Danae’s films have showcased internationally in many renowned film festivals receiving numerous awards.
Paul Cadieux / Producer
One of Canada’s leading and most active film and television producers. Among numerous other awards, he has won a Genie Award for Best Motion Picture for the Oscar-nominated LES TRIPLETTES DE BELLEVILLE. His more recent documentaries include: P.S. JERUSALEM (TIFF 2016, Berlin 2017), THE SETTLERS (Sundance 2017). A SISTER’S SONG (DocNYC, IDFA, DocAviv, RIDM), GAZA( SUNDANCE 2019); ADVOCATE (SUNDANCE 2019). THE LONGEST GOODBYE (SUNDANCE 2023) and I SHALL NOT HATE (CPH:DOX 2024)
Ashley Duong / Producer
Ashley Duong is a Vietnamese Canadian filmmaker. She wrote, directed, and produced the feature-length documentary, A Time to Swim, which won numerous awards including the Special Jury Prize for Best Feature Documentary at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. She has also produced and edited over 15 short documentaries for CBC Arts. Ashley currently works as a producer at Catbird Productions and at Da-Lê Films. An advocate for advancing ethical documentary practices, Ashley is a member of Brown Girl Doc Mafia, A-Doc, and BIPOC TV & Film. With a BA in Environment Studies and Cultural Studies from McGill University in Montreal, Ashley specializes in stories about identity, culture, and the environment.