Krzysztof Bagiński

What does it mean to be awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep? Kris and Michal push their experiences of life and love to a breaking point as they restlessly roam the city streets in search of answers, adrift in the euphoria and uncertainty of youth.

Aaa, Billy, Dawid, Filipka, and Olo perform, support each other, and protest, facing a hostile environment for queer people in Poland. In his first feature-length film, artist and choreographer Alex Baczyński-Jenkins accompanied this group of friends for a few years.

But Everyone Else Was Crying takes as a point of departure a Czech folktale, one that is known to have been jotted down in a diary of the late Czech artist and poet Jiří Kolář. It was later found by poet Konrad Góra, who re-wrote and translated it into polish in 2016; and now it has once more been edited and translated, this time into English, by Adam Repucha and Billy Morgan as part of this commission. Telling the story of Little Mouse –“our loyal friend”–, whose tragic drowning unfolds a chain of self-destruction amongst other organic and inorganic beings, the folktale provides a reflection on the cumulative damage that is caused to the world we inhabit.