Czarny portret

A luxury excursion for seniors financed by an anonymous sponsor. Kuba Krall, former war photographer, takes on the job of documenting the excursion. When one of the participants goes missing and is later found dead, police officer Inga Rojczyk appears at the scene. The two protagonists go back a long way, so they combine forces. A small spa town: on the face of it, peaceful; even idyllic. Not a bit of it. All the loose ends lead to Połczyn Zdrój and its history. A parallel narrative, divided between the contemporary investigation and World War II – when the Lebensborn programme operated out of the former Luisenbad sanatorium – finally comes together as we learn who the killer is. But identifying the murderer isn’t all that matters here. It turns out to be equally important to show how enduring are investigations into guilt and punishment when their sources are located in the past. Some paintings that were lost during the war and a book written by the murder victim which may give an account of the dark history of the sanatorium – which is still in operation – become the point of departure. Long-dead passions and animosities are revived. Children inherit difficult information and become entangled in a past over which they have no influence. The children who lived in Luisenbad during the war – it turns out – continue to influence the lives of people living today. The partially concealed truth returns after many years and those that survive are in fact immersed in the past.