One Dreams, the Other Doesn't

A group of young boys, wards of a juvenile detention center in eastern Poland, go about their heavily regimented daily activities. The mundane - breakfast, cleaning duties, English language lessons and workouts - is interspersed with intimate moments that reveal precious glimpses of the small joys and freedoms that can exist even within the confines of a reformatory institution. In between classes and gym sessions, they daydream of girls and the dates they could go on. "I'd take her to some cool islands. Imagine dinner on a yacht in Bali!" "I'd take her to a restaurant. Candles and stuff, pots of flowers!" "Or weed buds instead of flowers!" There are bars on the windows, but their laughter echoes within the walls, and the boys are glowing with joyful youth. Days, weeks and months blend into one long blur, with the passing of time within the center reflected only in the changing light outside the windows. The adolescents bond, sharing hopes, and dreams, and fears, and find support and brotherhood amongst themselves. The outside world looms, as the promise of freedom at eighteen brings its own challenges. During a sit-down meeting with a group of girls from the local hairdressing school, despite timidly sharing stories visibly intended to impress the opposite sex, many reveal deep and moving vulnerabilities. "It doesn't matter how tough you look. On the first night here, every guy cries into his pillow," says Greku, one of the more confident boys, but explains that he can find solace and confide in some of the guardians and teachers within the center. Krzysiek admits that he doesn't know what will happen to him after he is released, and stresses that some of them have no families to go back to. In this context, the detention center may still be a prison, but is also a haven - its rules and regulations offer a refuge from the much harder to follow obligations of the outside world, where comfort and care are sparse. "I planned to go to the Netherlands." "I was planning to go to England, but I won't." "Do you know how much they pay for a basket of strawberries?" The topic of economic emigration recurs in the boys' conversations. Mothers and sisters are mentioned, often in rueful tones, as guardians or missed loved ones - never fathers. The teenagers try to drown out the thoughts that after being released, they will have to face the indifferent reality, and make a living in a system that has very little to offer them.