You turn eighteen and think: freedom!

Trina has similar ideas. She is preparing to leave her controlling mother behind, when an aunt she barely knows arrives with a paralysed grandmother nobody has previously bothered to mention. This is not an encouraging development.

As family secrets begin to surface, Kashubian folklore starts behaving less like folklore and more like a practical problem. Old rituals, inherited violence and the legend of the òpi—a child destined to return as a wraith—creep into Trina’s increasingly unstable reality.

Òpi turns a toxic family system into a claustrophobic piece of folk horror, where adulthood does not mean escaping your inheritance so much as discovering exactly what you have inherited.

Some family traditions are best discontinued.

Marta Giec is a Polish writer, director and editor whose work combines psychological intensity with an experimental approach to form. A self-taught filmmaker from her teenage years, she later studied filmmaking and editing and co-founded the collectives Alternative Krystyna and sVHS.

Her work spans avant-garde shorts, international music videos and independent features, including Varia (2017) and the docu-fiction Halegazimba (2022). Òpi marks her feature debut as director.