Is Less of a Stranger (2026) Woke?

Kristoffer Rus's biographical drama about Jan Borysewicz and the rise of Lady Pank arrives bearing all the hallmarks of a film that has absolutely nothing to say about intersectionality, and says it with considerable conviction. Set against the grey concrete backdrop of the Polish People's Republic, the film concerns itself with state censorship, maternal illness, a deceased brother, and at least one regrettable Children's Day concert in Wrocław. The social consciousness on display here is of the vintage 1980s anti-communist variety: the enemy is the state, the weapon is a guitar, and the ideology is freedom in its most straightforward, pre-theorized sense. We score this kind of rebellion with the same respectful distance a customs officer gives to a jar of artisanal jam. Technically a substance, technically not what we are looking for.

The film's most notable progressive-adjacent element is a prayer-like voiceover in which Borysewicz addresses God directly about guilt and personal loss. This has been interpreted by some critics as overly sentimental. It has not been interpreted by anyone as a manifesto. Religious motifs in a Polish biographical drama are, in the vocabulary of our classification system, background noise. The casting reflects the historical demographics of communist-era Poland with a fidelity that several modern productions would find either admirable or deeply inconvenient, depending on the studio.

Director Rus was reportedly authorized by Borysewicz himself following extensive interviews, and the film is adapted from the subject's official autobiography, which places it firmly in the tradition of hagiographic rock biopics the world over. Polish critics found the screenplay formulaic. Our instrument, calibrated for a different frequency entirely, finds it essentially silent. The needle barely moves. This is not a criticism. It is, in the context of our work, almost a relief.