A new series, Girls from Lviv, premiered on the Polish TV channel TVP1. According to the authors’ concept, it should be a tragicomedy telling the stories of four friends who went to Poland as migrant workers, looking for a better life. Their stories are very different: one left behind a drunkard boyfriend, another, on the contrary, wants to earn money for her sweetheart, for whom she is ready to sacrifice anything. Yet another is trying to keep her head down after her company went bankrupt.
The four adventurous friends are played by Anna Maria Buczek, Anna Gorajska, Magdalena Wrobel, and Katarzyna Ucherska (left to right): young, largely unknown actresses, specially picked out by director Wojciech Adamczyk so that the characters do not associate with their previous roles. To fit the part better, the ladies took lessons of Ukrainian. The effort raises a question: would not it be easier to cast Ukrainian actresses, if not for all the leading roles (since it is a Polish production), then perhaps on the 50-50 basis? For the sake of test validity, so to speak?
The TV men believe that their film “shows the truth about Polish and Ukrainian societies, without adorning or distorting them.” However, this televised truth can miraculously do without Ukrainian actresses, and even Lviv scenes were shot in Przemysl, Poland. The authors and lead actresses claim their story to be true to life. There will be no “good Poles, bad Ukrainians,” or vice versa. According to Adamczyk, each female character will face Polish reality, and each must overcome difficulties. Besides, Polish men and women enter their lives, with their own problems, which inadvertently leads to new relationships and sometimes results in conflicts or banal misunderstandings. In fact, this should have been a cross-cultural soap about different mentalities and tolerance. But it is up to Polish, not Ukrainian, audience to judge if the authors succeeded. No matter how much Ukrainian TV managers trumpet about cooperation with Poland’s film market, no one is rushing to co-produce TV series yet.
