A Short Film About Love

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A Short Film About Love

Directed by	Krzysztof Kieślowski
Produced by	Ryszard Chutkowski
Written by	Krzysztof Piesiewicz Krzysztof Kieślowski
Starring	Grażyna Szapołowska Olaf Lubaszenko
Music by	Zbigniew Preisner
Cinematography	Witold Adamek
Editing by	Ewa Smal
Distributed by	Film Polski
Release date(s)	October 21, 1988
Running time	86 min.
Language	Polish
IMDb profile

A Short Film About Love (Polish: Krótki film o miłości) is an expanded film version of the sixth episode of director Krzysztof Kieślowski's 1988 Polish language ten-part made-for-television drama, The Decalogue.

The beneficiary of numerous accolades worldwide, The Decalogue films are commentaries on modern human existence with its moral ambiguities that make life so complex. Each film is based on one of the Ten Commandments. A Short Film About Love comes from Commandment number six which states: Thou shalt not commit adultery. The film, set in Warsaw, is about obsession, with a storyline that explores the themes of love and voyeurism through an examination of the relationship between a young man and an older woman that begins when he spies on her sex life through a telescope from his bedroom window across a courtyard to her apartment. Obsessed with her, and growing bolder, the young man invents reasons to make contact until finally he meets her and confesses his conduct and feelings. Their entanglement leads to deep psychological problems for both showing, without saying, right and wrong changing back and forth. Like Kieślowski's other films in the series it features the Man In White. There are many theories about who this mysterious character is, from suggestions he is God or a guardian angel right down to him just being an oridinary man who just by pure coincidence happens to appear in every episode.

Expanded to feature-length for the international market and with a different ending than the original, the film won the grand prize at the 1988 Gdańsk Film Festival and has been lauded as another masterpiece from a director that critic Roger Ebert calls "One of the greatest of all filmmakers."