By: Miguel Ernesto Yusty

THE GREAT FLOOD is a Polish series, consisting of six episodes and released on Netflix in 2022. It tells the story of a scientist, who is also a recovering drug addict, who has become estranged from her daughter and must reunite with her amidst a massive flood. Before the tragedy strikes, she senses the impending cataclysm, but her warnings are ignored by the city's administration. The series is inspired by real events that occurred in 1997 in Poland, when the city of Wrocław was submerged by the waters of the Oder River, leaving 114 dead.

The series follows the model of disaster stories in which a scientist foresees what will happen, but political or financial interests prevent preventative measures from being implemented. An example of this model is Steven Spielberg's JAWS, released in 1975. In this film, the forces of nature, represented by the wild shark, punish the ambition of "men," reminding the viewer that there are powers against which society cannot prevail. It is the metaphor of the flood, which is explicitly depicted in THE GREAT FLOOD.

Although the archetype of apocalyptic narratives is as old as culture itself, the Polish series, directed by Jan Holoubek and Bartomiej Ignaciuk, achieves a high level thanks to its direction of the actors, which allows them to create characters with gray areas. That is to say, while they adhere to established models, these are not a rigid constraint, allowing the viewer to complete the story through the pauses in their gazes or the silences in their dialogue. This quality, in addition to the high technical quality in recreating the flooded settings, makes this series a work to be considered amidst a vast array of content that, due to its sheer volume, exceeds the capacity of cinephiles whose lives are limited to 24 hours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcz6MNjTCE4&t