What is normal, in the context of a family-or a life? Look at his apocalyptic paintings, or listen to his S&M fantasies, and you might conclude that the Polish surrealist Zdzisław Beksiński was a strange man... Yet in person he was mild and self-effacing, a devoted husband, son and stoic father who spent the last decades of his life (up to 2005) in a modest Warsaw apartment living with his wife, his mother and his mother-in-law.

As if that wasn't enough, his neurotic and suicidal son was a frequent visitor and constant source of agitation. Zdzisław obsessively documented all of this in photographs, audio recordings and on video: an archive of everyday banality to counterpoint his extra-ordinary art.

Morbidly witty, impressively controlled, the dramatic feature debut from documentarian Jan P. Matuszyński draws from this dense multimedia diary to illuminate not only the career of a significant artist, but also to illustrate how chaos and despair coexist with the quotidian in every life.

Winner: Best Film, Denver, Lisbon & Estoril, and Polish (Gdynia); Best Actor, Locarno