MR. KUKAS ADVICES

comedy | Dariusz Gajewski | AT/PL | 2007 | 94 min
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Based on the novel HERRN KUKAS EMPFEHLUNGEN by Radek Knapp published by Piper Verlag

Release: 05.09.2008

One fine day, young Waldemar makes the decision to spend his summer in the West. He gathers some travel advice from his neighbor, Mr. Kuka, who offers assorted tips on how to behave in the West and why one should never return from a trip with a T-shirt saying “How can I serve you?”. On the bus to Vienna, vague doubts start creeping into Waldemar’s head as to how realistic Mr. Kuka’s advice was.

The bus resembles an upside-down refrigerator and his fellow passengers don’t look like tourists at all, especially since their only reason for traveling seems to be smuggling enough cigarettes and vodka across the border to last a small city for a year. Having arrived in Vienna, Waldemar discovers that his trip was well thought through by someone other than himself. Unaware of it, he has smuggled a precious coin across the border into the West for Mr. Kuka. Also, the recommended hotel turns out to be a park bench at the Belvedere Gardens.

But our young protagonist is not deterred, even when his Polish compatriots proceed to rip him off at the illegal worker’s pick-up site, or when his kleptomaniac roommate tries to coax him into committing an elegant little bank robbery, or when he has his cherry popped for his birthday: he tackles every hurdle the city has in store for him using a peculiar mixture of curiosity, naïveté, pluckiness and charm. Despite all the curious, wonderful encounters and experiences our young lucky duck at some point asks himself what the reason for his journey might be. But he wouldn’t be Waldemar if an answer didn’t come to him in time – in the guise of his eccentric employer’s mysterious lover …

With: Lukasz Garlicki, Nadia Cameron-Blakey, August Diehl, Branko Samarovski, Andrzej Grabowski, Tomasz Karolak, Krista Stadler and many more

Funding: Österreichisches Filminstitut, Filmfonds Wien, ORF Film/Fernseh-Abkommen, Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej, Eurimages, Media Plus Development Programme

Credits

Production Company Prisma Film- und Fernsehproduktion GmbH
● Mathias Forberg, Heinz Stussak
Opus Film
● Piotr Dzięcioł, Ewa Puszczyńska
SCREENPLAY Roland Gugganig
Dariusz Gajewski
Radek Knapp
DIRECTOR Dariusz Gajewski
DOP Wojciech Szepel
Editor Jarosław Barzan
Jarosław Kamiński
Michou Hutter
Art Department Nikolai Ritter
Costume Designer Monika Buttinger
Make up Gabriela Maciejowska
Production Manager Wernfried Natter-Conradi
Janusz B. Czech
Distributor Filmladen
World Sales Atlas International

Prizes

Piper, Herrn Kukas Empfehlungen:
Book of the month December 1999 in Germany