Writers: Arjun Talwar and Bigna Tomschin
Director: Arjun Talwar
This thoughtful documentary sees a foreigner living in Poland chart the history of the street on which he lives while gesturing towards the future of the country. Hailing from India, Arjun Talwar has lived on the 1km-long Wolf Street in Warsaw for over a decade, but it’s only after Covid that he decides to film the people who live on his road. Before, he would see people from his balcony, but now he wants to find out more about them and the old-fashioned neighbourhood in which he lives, its walls punctured by bullet holes and worn Catholic iconography on every corner. Letters from Wolf Street is an absorbing analysis of change and stasis.
Talwar was drawn to Poland for its cinema, and so it’s fitting that his film plays in the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival. He was also lured to the country by its food; the blandness intrigued him. However, Poland hasn’t always been kind to him or the friend who accompanied him. Because of his curly hair and dark skin, Varsovians unkindly referred to him as Michael Jackson. He was beaten up at least once.
His friend Adi has now died, and Letters From Wolf Street also acts as a memorial for him and as an examination of Arjun’s own grief. And yet, the film is broader than a study of the personal: it’s about Poland itself and who better to chronicle its story than an outsider.
Arjun is joined on part of his voyage by his friend Mo, originally from China, whom he met at film school. In the most striking part of the film, the pair goes on Poland’s annual Independence March, usually seen as a right-wing racist event. Arjun and Mo stand on the street watching the participants carrying Polish flags as they walk. “It’s like a funeral,” Mo proclaims into her windjammer. When an argument breaks out between some demonstrators, many covering their faces with masks, Arjun is surprised to discover that the Nationalist movement is more fragmented than he imagined. Still, you worry for Arjun and Mo’s safety as they film the rally and interview some of the marchers.
Balancing the Independence March, Arjun also films that year’s Pride March, a hopeful symbol that Poland is on the cusp of change. And it’s here, caught in the diversions that have closed the streets, where he finds another outsider, the Roma Oskar, who, despite his Polishness, remains on the edge of Polish society. Arjun reminds him that the Romani people originated from India; they are kinsmen. Unexpectedly, they become friends.
Across 90-minutes, Arjun meets a variety of people: shopkeepers, the local neighbourhood, and neighbourly postman who eats Asian food each lunch time, his therapist and a man from Syria who constructs computer-generated versions of the town he can never return to. All tell Arjun something about Poland, but none of them provides the answer to why he still remains in the country.
Just when you think the film will reach an optimistic resolution, something will happen, or something said that undercuts an easy conclusion. Never has a pumpkin been loaded with such symbolic meaning.
Letters from Wolf Street screens at Kinoteka Polish Film Festival on 26 March 2026
