Operation: Nation (Netflix, 2023)
Kryptonim: Polska (or: Operation: Nation) is an engaging comedy-drama about a young Polish nationalist who falls in love with a leftist activist.
The movie - written by Jakub Ruzyllo and Lukasz Sychowicz, and directed by Piotr Kumik - quickly makes it clear that main character Staszek (Maciej Musialowski) is not a real Nazi. He may live in Bialystok, where, according to folklore, they once used Jaffa cakes to make a Swastika. But he is basically a good guy, who mixes with the wrong kind of friends.
Also Roman (Borys Szyc), the leader of the Radical Youth Association, is not only family, he also collected money for Staszek, after an injury cut short his sports career. So Staszek feels he owes Roman some loyalty.
During a meeting of the Association in a bar, Staszek bumps into Polaris (Magdalena Mascianica), who has just split up with her boyfriend Kajetan (Antoni Królikowski) because he was cheating on her.
They fall in love but Staszek decides to hide his right-wing sympathies from his new left-leaning love. Which leads to chaos and confusion when they find themselves on opposing sides of a battle in the streets.
Roman, who kind of looks like Putin, may come across like a clown most of the time, but he has an evil plan and it all comes to a head during the Equality Parade in Warsaw.
Even though the creators make a little fun of Pola’s hipster values too, it is clear that forced to choose between fascism and the atrocities of ginseng tea, they will take a sip of the latter.
And if the story is at times a little predictable, it is thoroughly compensated by the engaging characters, some sharp dialogue, fluent editing and a well drawn social realist setting.
And to top it all off, Musialowski and Mascianica are very charming together.
Kryptonim: Polska was released theatrically in a couple of European countries last year and is now on Netflix.
A pleasant surprise.