East of Paradise
Filmmaker Lech Kowalski explores his belief that struggle is "the epitome of living" in this documentary which compares the wildly different life experiences of himself and his mother. Kowalski's mother came of age in Poland during the early stages of World War II, and after failed attempts to outrun both Nazi and Russian forces she and her family were sent to a Soviet concentration camp, where inmates were tortured, mistreated, and starved to the point where some ate their own lice in a desperate struggle to survive. Kowalski also depicts his own self-inflicted season in hell during his years on the New York City punk rock scene as he wallowed in the sordid underbelly of drug addiction, pornography, prostitution, and streetwise decadence. On both stories, Kowalski finds a message of hope and strength in the midst of almost certain peril.
Top Cast
Maria Kowalski
as
Info
More Like This
Temporarily Exiled
2020 • Movie
Flys and Angels
2009 • Movie

The Centuries Surround Me with Fire
1976 • Movie

Kino-Pravda No. 2
1922 • Movie

Guest from the Island of Freedom
1963 • Movie

Women of the Gulag
2017 • Movie

The Spy Who Went Into the Cold
2013 • Movie

:03 from Gold
2002 • Movie
Ascension
2009 • Movie

Master and Tatyana
2015 • Movie

The Cars We Drove into Capitalism
2021 • Movie

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga
2010 • Movie

Nestor Makhno
1996 • Movie

Gdud A'liyah
• Movie

Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory
2009 • Movie