Kino proudly makes Krzysztof Kieslowski’s (Blue, White, Red) A Short Film About Killing available for the first time on US home video and DVD. An expansion of and a departure from Episode V of Kieslowski’s famed European TV series Decalogue (Episode VI was adapted into A Short Film About Love), this theatrically released film is a haunting vision of the brutality of modern life and an ethical puzzle pitting random coincidence against irresistible fate. A Short Film About Killing employs a rich arsenal of cinematic imagination to create a persuasive portrait of savagery and redemption. It’s not only an artistic triumph, said The Chicago Tribune, it’s a nerve shredder. Despite occupying three different worlds within a decrepit modern Warsaw, three strangers unknowingly share a parallel destiny. In the shadows of a hellish housing project, a misanthropic cabby lavishes scorn on everyone and everything he sees. On a downtown sidewalk, a young drifter searches for himself in a shop window reflection while hiding his face from the police. Inside a privileged academic cloister, a would-be attorney defends his optimism in an oral bar exam. Through an appalling act of violence, cabby, drifter and lawyer are united in a shocking spectacle of wasted life that defies morality, upends empathy and makes martyrs of monsters.In A Short Film About Killing, Kieslowski has created a stunning rust-hued world of hard edged irony and sublime humanity while performing a detailed autopsy of a decaying society as barbaric as the crimes it abhors. In fact, Kieslowski’s film fed the personal outrage and national debate that would lead to a repeal of Poland’s draconian capital punishment statutes.
