How long can one be a stranger in a foreign land? What makes a good immigrant? The film “Letters from Wolf Street” by Indian filmmaker and immigrant Arjun Talwar seeks answers to these questions from Ulica Wilcza, the street he lives on in Warsaw, Poland.

From the beginning, the narrator sets about treating weighty topics in a light way, declaring that “being an immigrant in Poland often felt like an adventure”. In Indian-accented Polish, he interviews neighbors, shopkeepers and protesters at a nationalist march, among other places. He also seeks the wisdom of other foreigners in Poland, some of whom are integrated, while others appear to be living in a parallel world.

Poland is often perceived as hostile and closed to immigrants, but Talwar presents a more nuanced vision. What emerges is a microcosm of Polish society in a changing world. The film reveals a country with extremely limited experience with immigration since the fall of communism, which has gradually become more “colorful” over the decades.

Fast forward to the present, when shifting demographics and the war next-door in Ukraine have increased anxiety among Poles, while Talwar simply yearns for a sense of belonging. The collision of the two worlds makes for excellent cinema content, which often swerves between the funny and the tragic. InfoMigrants interviewed Arjun Talwar for more on his unique perspective as an immigrant in Poland. 

What motivated you to create this film?

For a long time, I had had this desire to make a film that showed Poland from my viewpoint. Even though the country is becoming much more diverse, the foreigner’s perspective is totally lacking in Polish culture. I didn’t however have a concrete idea about how to do this. Then a tragic incident occurred that left me devastated. In order to react, I started filming. Gradually the idea began to acquire a form.

What are your memories from your first days in Poland?

I remember walking from the train station to my film school, together with my best friend from India, who had emigrated with me. It was summer in the city of Łódź, but the streets were empty. People peeked out of the windows of old, crumbling buildings at us. It felt exotic, as if we’d been transported to another planet. Those first years were really inspiring, as I had the privilege to watch and make movies all day long. That’s just what I was after.

Yet there was a darker side. The town had a lot of poverty, alcoholism and violence. You had to watch your back when you were walking down the street if you were brown or Asian. Warsaw, where the film takes place, is much more relaxed in that sense.

The foreigners or outsiders living in a country that is predominantly white and Catholic are like a thread that connect the different parts of the movie. Why were you drawn to them?

There are a lot of foreigners in the film school. We speak Polish, have a Polish cultural education and fancy degrees, but there is practically no place for us in the local film industry. God knows how many of my colleagues I’ve seen trying to get jobs or their films financed, to no avail. You have a love for a country that just doesn’t love you back. And being in that position, we were always drawn to other outsiders, be they immigrants or Roma. The idea is to depict Poland through the eyes of those who have been ignored, you might say. And to do it a funny way.

What were the obstacles involved in making the film and how did you overcome them?

Well, the obstacles start from the get-go. Finding a producer or trying to convince people that you have something to say is a real challenge. So, I shot half the film without any form of production, with help from my wife Bigna Tomschin who edited and co-wrote it. From the main characters Mo and Feras, to the composer Aleksander, this was a friends’ circle that was able to function independently.

Eventually we managed to raise a little money in Poland and Germany and finish the film. At first, I was not sure whether Polish people would have the opportunity to watch it. But Berlinale changed everything for us. The film will be in the cinemas there and so far, Polish audiences have been really appreciative. Somehow the film managed to break through a barrier that had stood in place for a long time.

Why did you choose to film scenes at the annual nationalist march on Poland’s Independence Day?

When I went to the march with Mo, I ran into about seven people from my film school. They were all shooting something, trying to capture Poland’s rising extremism. But I didn’t want to just show the horrific part of it. I was looking to extract humor from the situation, explore the absurdity of it. And it’s staring you in the face. Just the presence of an Indian guy and Chinese girl at the right-wing march was funny, including for the people there – in fact, many of them wanted to take selfies with us. Do you know the Palestinian director Elia Suleiman? He uses this amazing dry humor to talk about serious things. I was thinking about him during that scene.

There is indeed a lot of humor interspersed throughout the film. Why was this important to you?

The film is funny first of all because the protagonists are these amazing, funny people, who can laugh at their own problems. That’s great, because it’s a way of taking away the whole victim angle and getting the audience to truly empathize with the characters.

Then there’s the voiceover script that I wrote with Bigna Tomschin, the editor. We tried to be funny, but also serious, critical of Poland but also warm. Finding that right tone, the right joke for the right moment, was one of the big challenges of the film.

At one point, you become interested in people from exotic countries who had left a mark on Polish culture. Were you surprised by what you found?

Poland was quite diverse before World War II. There were a lot of Jewish people, Roma, even some African Americans in the jazz scene. I was captivated by the story of some of these foreigners from the past, in particular the Tahitian actress Reri and Władysław Jabłonowski, a half-African general. In the film, I am also looking for a place for myself in Polish society, so I try to see the road that these people went down.

You meet Oskar, a Polish Romani, with whom you share an Indian heritage at one point in the movie. What did this association represent for you?

We met spontaneously at a gay-pride parade in Warsaw. I just saw somebody with an interesting face. He seemed like someone from a different world, and I sensed it would be good to shoot a conversation with him. I didn’t realize that he was going to change the course of the film.

When Polish Romani people learn that you are from India, they become joyful, because their origins are in India. It was quite surreal being at Oskar’s house in the middle of nowhere in Poland and hearing vocabulary for daily objects that would be the same in my own language. It’s charming but it’s also a fact that they have been ostracized for a long time.

Do you think this film can help promote tolerance and openness to foreigners in Polish society?

The film presents a perspective that most Polish people have never seen before. That someone from so far away can speak their language and decipher their culture is surprising to them. I think by watching the film, they can start to see immigrants as regular people and not some kind of other species. I’m hopeful that it can also demonstrate to the film community there that foreigners should be given a voice.

I guess we got a bit lucky with the timing. It’s a moment now when foreigners have become fodder for political debate. The left might say we’re good for the economy, the right that we’re criminals or whatever, but the conversation is always in this abstract, amorphous way. So, the movie inverts the situation. It’s no longer about Poles looking at foreigners, but about a foreigner examining the Poles.