A woman filmmaker transforms decades of personal footage into a cinematic excavation of toxic love, memory, and liberation.

Birdie is the story of my becoming—told through the gaze of a camera that has followed me since childhood. My father, cinematographer Krzysztof Ptak, taught me that the lens was power. At sixteen he gave me a miniDV camera, and from then on I filmed everything—my silence, my surroundings, my own face. Years later, ayahuasca led me to Manuel, a shaman twenty‑five years older. I became his wife, disciple, and archivist, believing I was documenting transcendence while recording my own disappearance. In 2016, two blows shattered that illusion: Manuel announced he wanted a second wife, and soon after my father died. Returning to Poland, I turned the camera inward and faced the truth—I had married a predator. Healing came through my mother, once estranged, and Lisa, once rival, now survivor. Together we uncovered patterns of manipulation and violence. Birdie is not a film about cults, but about memory, power, and reclaiming voice. Through layered archival and personal footage, it becomes a cinematic excavation of identity, silence, and the redemptive force of storytelling.