Max Cegielski talks with Marcin Ogdowski
Polish soldiers in Afghanistan: heroes or mercenaries?

The starting point for the talk is the Israeli artist Omer Fast’s movie titled Continuity from the exhibition "In the Heart of the Country".

The movie tells a story of a young soldier’s “return” from military service in Afghanistan. Presenting three variants of the same situation, each time with a different actor playing a son returning from the war, the movie makes us realize that the contemporary Western societies are incapable of dealing with the experience of the war which badly encroaches upon the Old Continent’s reality.

During the talk, Max Cegielski will inquire his interlocutor, Michał Ogdowski, about the outcome of the ten-year Polish military presence in Afghanistan, as well as the cultural and psychological incapability to return. Michał Ogdowski is an experienced war correspondent and author of the blog zAfghanistanu.pl.

Michał Ogdowski – journalist and war correspondent (Iraq, Afganistan); called „the first Polish war blogger.” Author of the awarded blog zAfganistanu.pl, publisher of the home site of the webportal INTERIA.PL, author of the coverage zAfganistanu.pl. The Alphabet of the Polish Mission and the novel The Last Witness. He declares that what he finds the most attractive in the war is the everyday life so it is this that he writes about.