Every dream comes with struggle and sacrifice.
Beautifully filmed and observed, Struggle for Life, is a touching and witty comedy drama about the quest to achieve happiness and the search for a better life; setting so-called “middle class” problems against the struggle to survive.
Tomasz Novak is an unemployed linguist living in Poland with his girlfriend and young daughter. He has no money and dwindling hope for a decent life for his family. He travels to Norway to get hold of what he believes to be easy money from a father he has never met. During Tomasz’s stay in Norway he becomes increasingly integrated into Norwegian society, here represented by a privileged and well-intentioned group of citizens in Oslo’s affluent townhouse area, who in the absence of real problems are experts at creating their own ones. It’s a world of wealth, stability and a totally different type of anxiety and paranoia.
As our neutral observer to this environment, Tomasz plays witness to the families living in this suburban bubble, characters who are intensely preoccupied with issues such as house prices, maintaining an immaculate garden and the conversation of local wildlife ; superficial, material preoccupations that often mask darker and deeper emotions, desires and relationships.
Struggle for Life affectionately and poignantly studies our modern problems and behaviours and asks the viewer to see them through the eyes of those not so fortunate.
