Prime Time         4 suns

The Polish drama Prime Time portrays a fictional hostage situation in a TV studio on live TV om New Years Eve, 1999. A young 20 year-old, Sebastian (Bartosz Bielenia) takes control of the studio with a gun and demands that he be allowed to read his statement to the nation on live TV. The situation becomes a standoff between Sebastian and the television staff and police. The tension between the parties is realistically represented as the police struggle with ways to handle the situation without getting people killed. We also see how the relationship between hostage taker and his two hostages changes as the hours pass by. The actor Bielenia is especially talented with his range of emotions. I saw this same actor only a few months ago in the Polish drama Corpus Christi with his character impersonating a priest in a small village. The producer of Prime Time said he needed to place the film in the nineties to show the importance of television at that time and to avoid the widespread availability of the internet and social media.