How It’s Done

Piotr Tymochowicz, media advisor to some of Poland’s top politicians, claims that anybody can be molded into a charismatic leader. To prove it he’s looking for a greenhorn that can be turned into a candidate. A call is put out for would-be participants, and hundreds apply. A small group is selected and under go training. Polish master Marcel Lozinksi followed Tymochowicz and this project for three years, and this beautifully shot and edited work paints a compelling portrait of cynical (and quite familiar) demagogy and populism in action. Taken through exercises in all aspects of being a politician, from body language to handling media scrums, soon a candidate emerges. The relative ease with which the political rookie, Dariusz, merges into active political life is quite shocking, as is his completely malleable ideology. “It’s a revolution in communications,” claims Tymochowicz.