Marek Koterski is a Polish film director virtually unknown to American audiences. He has recently come to the attention of critics and viewers alike and is gradually gaining recognition as a prominent auteur. Ewa Mazierska considers him the greatest Polish director since Andrzej Wajda (Mazierska 2013: 159). Koterski's oeuvre should be examined in its entirety as it represents an unusual phenomenon: a coherent narrative spanning an octology of eight tightly connected feature films. All eight films revolve around the same protagonist, a Polish intellectual named Adam (the director's alter ego), as well as his everyday life and family. Adam Miauczyński is an everyman living in the rapidly changing world of Eastern Europe, a world by which he is somewhat baffled. Koterski's octology – and, most pointedly, the two films in it that this chapter focuses on, Dzień świra/The Day of the Wacko (2002, henceforth referred to as Wacko) and Wszyscy jesteśmy Chrystusami/We're All Christs (2006, henceforth Christs) – takes a sceptical look at both the Polish communist past and post-Wall present, yet also suggests a path towards salvation that the director sees not in political changes but in spirituality and humanity. Within Polish cinema and culture, Koterski is hardly alone in his assessment of recent Polish history and the fraught progression from communist past to post-communist present, seeing political and economical changes as going from bad to worse and bemoaning – together with his protagonist – the artist's precipitous fall from the status of national prophet (Mazierska 2013: 145–59). What does make him unique is his original cinematic style, the poignant psychological assessment of self and others, and his black humour.

The choice of the protagonist's first name appears quite straightforward: Adam was the first man, and Koterski's protagonist is the ‘everyman’. The often used diminutive form of this name, Adaś, suggests his infantile connection to his mother and turns the adult man into a child, the role he seems to play even as an adult. The last name, Miauczyński, hints at the miaowing of a cat and evokes the director's name, Koterski (kot is Polish for ‘cat’). Oppositions between dogs and cats, as well as between men and women, pervade the octology, and this last name suggests that Adam does not belong to the stronger or more aggressive camp.