Katarzyna Warzecha
Poland | 2020 | 10 min
World premiere
Languages : English, Polish
Subtitles : English, French
After his mother’s death, Adam finds his parents’ correspondence. We discover a love adventure entangled in the 20th century, when the world was cut in two and the war between Iran and Iraq marked the start of tragic conflicts in the Middle East. Mixing animation and found footage, we dive in a odyssey full of bombshells and secrets.
We Have One Heart narrates a private family odyssey. Halina is an art student from Poland and Farouk an Iraqi young man in Europe for a university exchange. They meet in Budapest and fall in love. Soon after their union, Farouk needs to renew his visa and flies to Baghdad, leaving Halina alone and pregnant. Time goes by—and so does History—and our two protagonists stay apart, entangled in events bigger than them. In its short form, We Have One Heart takes us in a 40 years long journey in which we retrace some of the events that shaped the world as we know it. The fall of the communist rule, the Iraq-Iran War are evoked in a refined style underlying the consequences of politics on people’s everyday choices. Narrated by a young boy, the film has a mellow and light-hearted atmosphere and yet manage to reflect on our place in History and on the burden of secrets. The title of the film refers to one of Farouk’s heartbreaking letters to Halina, but thanks to his poetry, we are reminded of the universal strength of empathy.
Rebecca De Pas