Ask The Tropers

That is rather odd. I would tend to agree that it makes no sense to put an English-language film not produced in Poland in the index of Polish films.

Ok, found it. Took a while.

The film was co-produced with Polish National Television and privately-owned Polish movie making company, Heritage Films, I have no idea why jamespolk keeps ignoring that. 2/3 of the cast is made from Polish actors, who among themselves speak lines in Polish, unless Translation Convention goes straight and they switch for English. It's filmed on location, with sizable chunk of the crew being made from Polish technicians.

In short - it's a typical multi-national co-production.

I will requote myself from similar case that happend in early 80s, using our PM discussion:

"And like I was saying - you are making modern "Danton" case out of it. In '83 Polish government denied that the film, almost exclusively done by Polish actors (aside Depardieu as Danton), Polish crew, in Polish sets and by Wajda, one of the most famous Polish directors, is Polish. Suddenly it became French movie. Because it's in French. Never mind it was a film about French Revolution and that was intentional translation convention, suddenly the film ceased to be Polish on a whim.

Only that they at least had solid reason to play the ball (the film was basically supporting revolutionary atmosphere, while there was martial law in Poland back then and the commie regime barely contained pro-democratic movement), while you are doing something almost identical... just because. Which I don't understand. "

I don't know where the statement "2/3 of the cast is made from Polish actors" comes from, unless we're talking bit parts and extras. Amongst the main cast only Michal Zebrowski, who played Jurek, was Polish. Most of the rest of the cast was British, with Adrien Brody and Thomas Kretstchmann (sp?) being American and German respectively. The main production companies were Studio Canal and Studio Babelsburg, which are French and German respectively.

And, once again, the film is not in the Polish language.

And it doesn't need nor have to be. By your own admission, that film should be British, American or maybe Australian? After all, it's in English. I bet New Zealand, always liked it ever since The Piano , which makes it somewhat related to the case.

And the main producer was - according to the production data - Heritage Films. Just because they happend to be local company managing sets and locations.

Really, we can push it back and forth. It's 6:18 in the morning here, can this wait about 4 hours? I'm leaving to work in 12 minutes anyway, should catch up after 10.

So, anything at all? Over 17 hours have passed.

Or does it simply mean the case is closed?

I dont think it is yet. No.

Gah, this is why trying to categorize everything by nationality is such a mess. It's a constant source of edit wars on The Other Wiki.

We try to be more informal around here. But that doesn't always help us avoid flamewars. :/

My inclination would be to say that if more than two countries are involved (the Other Wiki lists four here), it's an international production. But I'm not sure we have that option at the moment.

Where was the film first shown? The official release was where?

^ Location of first release can mean little as it's not uncommon for Hollywood movies to premiere in London or France instead of LA.

That said, the movie strikes me as a multinational production, and seems to have so many involved in it, I'd not list it as a Polish or French or British or German film.

I guess one can also cut the difference and list it under Polish Media, German Media, French Media and British Media, but that's some index bloat.

If it had been made by a Polish film company I'd be OK with it being on the Polish Media list. If Polanski had filled his cast with Polish actors speaking Polish, I'd be OK with it being on the Polish Media list.

Neither of those criteria are the case here.

^^ However, that's the metric we use in pretty much every other medium. I could counter your "exception" by pointing out that advance copies aren't considered a release, or point out that it really is uncommon for a given film to have a red-carpet premiere outside of the home country, and a number of other things. Where was the film first released to the general public?

I think Xtifr has the best point. But since that's not an option - Ghilz's solution sounds the best of them all. Bloat or not, it solves it.

@crazysamaritan There is a monstrual difference between each type of medium, saying "but we do that in medium X, why not apply it to medium Y?" solves absolutely nothing.

But we do that in mediums Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, and X, why not apply it to medium Y? I'm not advocating one medium's metric.

Wikipedia seems very clear that the first public release was in Poland, and the UK release was six months later (the next year, even). It's a Polish film intended for worldwide release.

(Note that The Lord of the Rings, a film intended for eventual worldwide release first released in North America and the very next day in New Zealand and was filmed mostly in New Zealand, is indexed under only New Zealand Media.)

We do have International Coproduction, but that's currently marked as trivia rather than as an index.

I find value in indexes of films by country, but not if the film really can't be assigned to any one country. I like that we have Polish Media and Japanese Films and the like. But if something like The Pianist is clearly an International Coproduction—French and German people shooting a movie in Poland with British actors speaking in English—maybe it shouldn't go on any nationality index at all. The Pianist is already indexed in five other ways.

A change in wiki policy should be discussed in a Wiki Talk thread. This discussion has already gone longer than most ATT thread.