How do childhood events affect our adult lives? How to get to the most closely protected family secrets? Kamila Tarabura – the winner of the prestigious “Polityka” Passport in the Film category – tries to answer these questions in her full-length feature debut. “Travel Essentials” is a story about the search for one’s own identity, inspired by the moving reportage “Wetland” by Katarzyna Surmiak-Domańska. Agnieszka Holland was the artistic supervisor of the project.

Ada, a respected journalist living in Hamburg, receives a mysterious package. It is a book with the memoirs of a woman who was molested as a child by her father, written under a pseudonym, with a personal dedication to Ada. The journalist decides to meet the author, who turns out to be her former schoolmate, Roxana. Together, they embark on a journey to the town where they grew up to confront Roksana’s mother, a silent witness to her childhood hell. While there, however, it turns out that her mother rigidly guards the family secrets, maintaining the image of a perfect husband and family. Ada decides to describe this complicated and intriguing story in a reportage. However, for her, the subject of Roxana is not the most important one in the trip. She also has to settle accounts with the demons of the past – they are the ones that prevent her from moving forward in her relationship with her partner, with whom she is already pregnant. Emotions between the heroines intensify, and Ada finds it increasingly difficult to keep her distance and assess what a lie and the truth are.