“Closure”

“Closure” is an atypical documentary whose style perfectly fits its subject. What begins as a search for a missing teenager slowly becomes an intimate (and at times, almost unbearable) portrait of a family suspended between hope and grief.

One year after 16-year-old Krzysztof Dymiński vanished, director Michal Marczak follows the boy’s father, Daniel, as he returns to the last place his son was seen: on a bridge over Poland’s Vistula River. Daniel visits the river again and again, clinging to the increasingly unlikely possibility that his son might still be alive.

Marczak’s camera drifts across the calm surface of the Vistula River, sinking into its dark depths as Daniel watches with a stoic resolve. Daniel takes his boat out in rain, snow, and all hours of the day and night, scanning for any sign of his missing son. There’s a lot of tension in watching the man dig through piles of mud and thick reeds, always bracing for what he might find underneath.

At home, Daniel and his wife Agnieszka wrestle with the unbearable unknowns like why Krzysztof vanished, whether he chose to jump, and whether they’ll ever get answers. As time stretches from weeks into months and years, Daniel’s search expands into the digital world as he traces his son’s online footprint for any clues.

What’s most striking is how cinematic this documentary feels. It often plays like a narrative feature, yet its power comes from its intimacy. The camera travels with Daniel in his boat, dives beneath the river, and floats overhead in drone shots, but it always returns its focus to Daniel’s face. Viewers share in every flicker of hope as well as every moment of dread. It’s so effective.

This front row seat to grief in real time is what makes “Closure” so haunting. It’s a deeply humane, beautifully made film about the painful truth of what it means to keep searching when closure may never come.

By: Louisa Moore