Inspired by some of the circumstances and individuals that Kieslowski discovered in his documentary shorts, The Scar uses a fictional narrative to address how individuals can be devoured by a system they once hoped to change. “Is everything under control?” demands an ambitious small-town Party head preparing to receive a delegation from Warsaw. The stakes? A large fertilizer factory, whose product isn't the only thing that stinks once it's finally delivered. The environment is ruined; jobs are promised, then withdrawn; revitalization seems around the corner, until it fades away: the glory that the Party has vowed will come never arrives, leaving the project's once-idealistic manager to face the questions, grudges, and complaints of an angry community. Satire? Metaphor? Social realism, according to Kieslowski, that uses the constructs of fiction to arrive at an inescapable truth: the state was failing, and swallowing up all who once believed in it.