Whoever Knows...

"Anyone Who Knows..." by Kazimierz Kutz is – as the director himself emphasized – a film of one, at most two major roles and dozens of minor ones. According to this concept, the focus is not on individual characters but on collective protagonists: Polish society and the media. The pretext for portraying them is a journalistic "investigation" into the disappearance of a young girl, conducted by a novice reporter. Similar to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, the plot primarily serves as a framework for reflections on much broader issues. A woman comes to the editorial office, asking the journalist for help in finding her younger sister, who vanished without a trace a few days earlier. What happened to her is unknown – neither coworkers nor the housekeeper with whom she lived have any information. The only clue is an old, blurry photograph. The reporter, in his quest for the truth, meets people from her circle and gets to know the environments she frequented. However, the fate of the missing Marysia Ruśniak remains unclear until the very end. Much more vividly, the film reveals a portrait of Poland at that time: selfishness, indifference, and social contrasts, as well as the ruthlessness of the media, which treat other people’s tragedies as material for sensational news.