Three colours.

Kristof Kieslowski started his career shooting documentaries and short films. Later he became associated with the "cinema of moral anxiety,” which grouped several Polish directors. His best known work is the three colours series "Blue," "White" and “Red". "Blue" shared the Golden Lion at Venice in 1993, and "White" earned Kieslowski the best director prize in Berlin, 1994. "Red" brought him an Academy Award nomination for best director in 1995.“Three colours” is a series of interrelated movies. They don’t have the same characters, but similar topics. They all explore the loving nature of the human being, and how it can get corrupt by the things that happen to us in our lives. “Blue” and “Red” are in French, and “White” is in Polish with some fragments in French.

“Blue” stars Juliette Binoche as a tormented woman who has lost her husband and child in a car accident, but survived it herself. Her love for life keeps her from committing suicide, but she tries to live as simply as possible, with no contact with other human beings, in order to avoid another heartbreak.

“White” stars Zbigniew Zamachowski, Polish actor, as Karol Karol, a loving young man who gets thrown out by his 6-month-long wife, Julie Delpy. Delpy appears in this movie as a cold, heartless woman, who despises her husband because he can’t perform sexually. Karol finds himself thrown out with only a bag full of priceless what valuable-less belongings in the streets of Paris, knowing very little French and without a Passport that will allow him to return to his motherland, Poland. Eventually he gets back, and works upon a sweet vengeance against his pitiless wife.


“Red” stars a very young and angelical Irene Jacob, as a fashion model with a big heart. One night, she runs over a dog, and takes her to the veterinary, saving her life. When she tries to return the dog, she finds a careless old owner who has the habit of spying on the airwaves the telephone conversations of his neighbours. First, Jacob’s character despises him, but through very long and honest conversations they get to know and care for each other.

Apart from a brief cameo of Juliette Binoche’s character from “Blue” at the beginning of “White,” the trilogies don’t have an obvious connection until the end of “Red,” when the main characters of all three movies suffer a ferry accident. A great way of Kievlowsky of reuniting the movies is using a very simple anecdote. All the three protagonists sit and watch how an old person tries to put a crystal bottle in a recycle bin, struggling because it’s too high. Only Jacob’s character helps. Maybe because she is young and hasn’t suffered as much, maybe because she is truly good inside.

Krzysztof Kieslowski, died in 1996 at the age of 54, leaving behind him a wonderful collection of movies, that make us think about human nature in a way that not many directors can achieve.