Marek Walczewski

Drawing on Jewish legend, this Kafkaesque work of speculative science fiction is the debut feature by one of the great visionaries of the 20th century. From a nightmarish world of gods and monsters, Piotr Szulkin forges a modern Prometheus as a potent allegory for Poland’s Communist experiment.

Scope, a prisoner on a behemoth space station, is chosen to ‘volunteer’ to explore far-away planets. Landing on planet Australia-458, Scope finds that his freedom comes with a high price—his violent demise will be broadcast live for the viewing pleasure of Australia-458’s inhabitants.

Conjuring a claustrophobic vision of post-nuclear Poland, Piotr Szulkin lends his satirical eye to the weaponization of religion as a means of social control. A utilitarian triumph of ramshackle world-building, O-Bi, O-Ba is a hallucinatory examination of apocalyptic anxieties in the atomic age.