Innocent Sorcerers

He (T. Łomnicki) works as a sports doctor, but he truly comes alive only at night, when he sits with his instrument in a jazz club. She (K. Stypułkowska), a high school student, visits the club out of curiosity and fascination with a rhythm that promises adulthood. Their meeting doesn’t lead to a typical flirtation but to an experiment: they want to see if they can spend the night without involving feelings. They give themselves new names—Bazyli and Pelagia. The masks are supposed to help them play the roles of people who are unshaken, indifferent, and in control of the situation. They set the rules of the evening like elements of a theatrical script: from the first drink to conversation about "important matters," from feigned detachment to the inevitable shortening of physical and emotional distance. As the hours pass, their game turns into a duel where the stakes are not who will win over whom, but who will first admit that the game only serves to hide the fear of true feelings. The matchstick game becomes a symbol of this delicate war of appearances—someone has to lose for both to win.