A Film by Zuza Banasińska
Production by Zuza Banasińska and ALE ALE
Co-Produced by Vents Contraires

2026 | 21 mins | Digital Video | Color | 25fps

Kontrewers follows an encounter between the ghost of a possessed girl, trapped for centuries within a stone, and the director’s 102-year-old grandmother, confined to her living room and waiting for death. The ghost, tied to a Polish folktale about the mysterious Kontrewers stone, becomes drawn to the pious older woman, mistaking her for her long-lost mother. What begins as a haunting turns into a surreal and tender dialogue, where both transform the traces of repression and inheritance beyond bloodlines.

Conjuring this encounter between themself, their grandmother, and the haunted relic, the filmmaker weaves archival, staged, and documentary materials. The act of filming becomes an exercise in listening and accompaniment: an attempt to let the grandmother’s presence, at the verge of death, leave a trace. Kontrewers redefines possession as a non-linear mode of communication: a negotiation of boundaries between self and other. By foregrounding mediation and the material traces of trauma, the film asks how care and violence intertwine, how inherited wounds persist, and.

What was once buried resurfaces between generations through the persistence of matter, bodies, and gestures: the mediums through which memory insists on being felt.

Screenings

2026 Berlinale Shorts - Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Berlinale), Berlin (DE)