🇵🇱 Poland: Bartek’s Getaway Bus l Witness

Crime and scrap metal are the focus of Bartek’s life. He is a poor but determined Polish teenager, who makes a living by stealing scrap metal from a disused steel mill.

He is in increasing danger of dropping out of school and being sucked into the rampant gangs around him. But he has a project that could just get him and his ‘gang of five’ away from a life of violence and crime.

The boys have been offered a piece of scrap metal, in the form of a wrecked-out old van, that they have been asked to restore with the help of Robert, a youth worker. Bartek soon realises that this vehicle could have a transforming influence on his life.

As a reward for their work, the five are being promised a holiday of a lifetime – a trip to Barcelona. But can the boys rise to the challenge? Moreover, will the adults who are organising this project live up to their promises?

Bartek’s story is set in Poland, against the backdrop of coal production and economic crisis, and how such circumstances impact young people especially.

Through Bartek, we meet his gang and his family – his young mother and alcoholic grandfather who think nothing of his stealing; we witness the social decay in Poland’s abandoned mining towns, where one million unemployed men and their families live in poverty; and we follow a young man who is building his getaway van.

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