Candidates Of Death

Bluesky

When film director Maciej Cuske decided to encourage his then pre-teen son Stansiu and his two school friends Rafal and Adrian to shoot a movie in the style of the horror movies they loved, he couldn’t have imagined it was the start of a tradition that runs for the 17-year shooting of this film and beyond. But isn’t that often the way with families as the thing you began as a bit of a lark, takes root?

So it is with Candidates Of Death, the name given to a series of horror shorts that were written and shot each year as Cuske took the three lads on vacation in various spots across the Polish countryside and backwoods. This enjoyable documentary is partially about that tradition – one that actually led them to get serious about documenting it somewhere around the 14-year mark. But despite the portentous title, it’s chiefly about father and son bonding and the importance of friendship, even if things shift down the years.

Rather than unfolding linearly, this is a collage of a film, dipping in and out of summers as the kids run around carefree and, later, talk about worries or their hopes for the future in between coming up with various outlandish ideas for their horror shorts. This approach is presumably a largely practical decision because there is considerably more footage from the more recent holidays than those near the start, thanks to better camera phones and the fact they began to invite another friend, Tomasz Pawlik, along, who shoots chunks of the film without declaring his presence.

The director and the lads are an engaging group, and the nature of the film means we get to see them growing up like a scrappier version of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. As kids, they run around having energetic water fights, while in adolescence their voices start to drop and they begin to take the job of filmmaking more seriously. Then, as they reach college age, worklife and study starts to impact on the time they have for their yearly adventure. Cuske is also a key figure, the youngster’s maturing reminding him of his own mortality, while paradoxically also helping to keep him young. Candidates Of Death becomes a quiet celebration of all the positive things that can come from creative endeavour besides the end product itself.

What seems at first like a casual diversion from computer games becomes an exercise in bonding and an escape from outside pressures that has even gone on to influence the young men’s own careers. Major revelations are unnecessary in a documentary that reminds us it's the small moments that can make the most difference.

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