WELL TALK: "There are no successful relationships. There are only true ones" - interview with Maria Zbąska, director of "This is not my film"

“This is not my film” is a beautiful story about a mature but unspectacular love, faded by years of living together. Two characters – Wanda and Janek – set off on a winter hike along the Baltic Sea. In the harsh, silent landscape they confront each other, their past and the unspoken. Karolina Magiera-Wróbel talked to Maria Zbąska about relationships that fall apart in silence and about the need for closeness that is hard to maintain during the Mastercard OFF CAMERA festival.

This is not my movie - poster / press materials

Karolina Magiera - Wróbel: Where did the idea for the story about a couple who go on a hike along the seaside to test the strength of their relationship come from?

Maria Zbąska: There were many inspirations. Our film is about love, so you don't have to look far. It's about a crisis in a relationship in the middle of February. Just call any friend, ask "how are you?" and she'll answer what my heroine did: that she hates this country, her job, her "old man" and she just wants to leave. However, such an internal, true, sincere motivation was the feeling that appears when we suddenly see that love is dying. Maybe in the context of the world's great problems, this one is not the biggest, but on the other hand it is always a key problem for us. We push everything else aside when something like this happens. It's really very sad - what to do then? Why can't we just sit down for a coffee and talk, even though we love each other? Instead, we fuel the spiral of being simply terrible to each other.

Many people watching the film might think: “this is about me, about my relationship.” How did you manage to create the characters, so ordinary and yet so moving and thought-provoking?

I have been a documentary filmmaker since birth and everything that is shown on the screen is the result of observing reality. I do not invent anything, I do not sit down with a blank sheet of paper and a glass of wine and write, I simply observe and put the puzzle together.

So these characters are so universal because their traits are reflected in each of us?

Somehow it happened – and this is wonderful – that in the film there are many very individual threads: mine, my actress's, my friends', and even though it seems that no one has it, suddenly it turns out that everyone has it. We all cry over cauliflower or we are happy about it.

Wanda is very expressive, sometimes a bit eccentric, while Janek, her partner, is sparing with words and emotions. Do you think that such a relationship has the right to exist at all – an introvert with an extrovert?

I think that the other has no right to exist. Even when two very similar people meet, they are like a compass – one is north, the other south. There is no other way out. Despite initial similarities, after ten years someone has to be more responsible so that someone else can be a poet. Two poets have no chance, just like two specific people, they would get bored with each other.

This is not my film / Mastercard Off Camera press materials

There is no great drama between the characters that destroys their relationship. It is rather many small cracks, a kind of loneliness. Is this how relationships end, do we slowly, quietly leave?

I don't know. This movie asks questions rather than answers. It starts with a question mark and ends with a question mark. This story is about that, but there are probably a million different stories. I think the problem is a lack of communication. The fact that we can't talk to each other. A kind of laziness. Social media, which creeps into our lives and destroys both closeness and the ability to communicate. This constant access to mass attractions makes us less interesting to each other. These are all common problems - they accompany many couples. Maybe they are mostly related to this "rich" part of the world, but without love we won't last very long.

Exactly – Wanda and Janek have a roof over their heads, a stable daily life, and yet they are emotionally on the edge. Have we, as a society, believed too much that comfort and safety will guarantee us happiness in a relationship?

I think that happiness never depends on what we have. It does not result from our status. Of course, if we are affected by great human dramas, we modify our scale, but the worst is when nothing happens. I do not wish tragedy on anyone, but when we lack challenges - then we do not prove ourselves. This is probably the saddest kind of existence. One in which we have no reason to get out of bed or - as in our film - the couch.

This is not my film / Mastercard Off Camera press materials

What was the casting like for the film? Did you have a vision of what the ideal actors should be like?

It was a long, interesting, but also frustrating process. I worked with Nadia Lebik – a wonderful casting director who didn’t bring anyone who wasn’t “right”. Everyone was “right”. It wasn’t a situation where I was looking for the “Queen of England” with a set of very specific features. Each of these people, these couples played brilliantly and brought something unique, creating a completely different film. It wasn’t a choice between someone bad and someone good, but between different types of cinema. And in the end I chose this type. Zofia Chabiera is an extraordinary artist – she’s not a professional actress, but a singer. Marcin Sztabiński, on the other hand, is a stage actor who was cast in the lead role in a film for the first time. It was certainly difficult for him to play with someone who is an amateur.

Lots of debuts.

Yes, it was a very debut film. I think that if there was a competition for the most debutants in one production, the prize would be ours. (laughter)

Maria Zbąska and Marcin Stabiński / Mastercard Off Camera press materials

What role does the Baltic Sea and its nature play in this story, and why this particular place?

Janek chose the Baltic Sea. He loved the mountains and wanted to show Wanda a "gateway", a way out of the problem, something that gives him meaning in life, restores harmony and is a source of happiness. Unfortunately, Wanda was not suited to go with him to the mountains without preparation. That is why Janek made a compromise - they will indeed go, meet nature in its wildness, mystery and beauty, but they will go on flat ground. It was his choice, not mine. I personally think that the Baltic Sea is the most beautiful place in the world.

Especially in winter, right?

Especially in winter, because it's empty. Nature just doesn't escape. There are animals, there's beautiful light, it's a truly magical place.

Have you encountered any difficulties along the way?

Same. I don't know what question you would have to ask me to answer "no, it didn't cause us any difficulty." (laughter)

How long did the filming take?

Three weeks at the seaside and a week in Warsaw. Of course, there were transfers between different bases, we shot on different parts of the beach, because I really wanted to show the diversity of the coast, which is completely different in the west than in the east, the landscape is constantly changing.

That fox that approaches the main characters on the beach, did it appear there by accident?

The inspiration was real foxes, of which there are plenty by the seaside – they can run long distances every day, but ours was trained… and on top of that it turned out to be a fat, mean vixen who didn’t want to cooperate at all. She didn’t suffer during filming – on the contrary, she gorged herself on fish. We were the ones who suffered.

And the sled – is it a practical prop or does it have some symbolic meaning in this story?

I once read an interview in Gazeta Wyborcza with a couple who went on a winter hiking trip along the Baltic Sea. Their motivation was completely different, I didn't even want to meet them so as not to get too involved in their world, but I remembered it as an image. I imagined two people pulling sleds on the sand. The article said that the snow had melted and they had turned back, but these sleds glided very well on the frozen sand. I thought that they had something of a polar expedition in them, and at the same time they brought back associations with childhood. They were simply a good gadget - because when someone brings a sled home, it's hard to argue. And so this seemingly insensitive Janek found a good key to get Wanda off the couch.

Why do the couple set themselves such radical conditions: either a journey to the end or an end forever? What does this symbolic descent from the beach mean to them?

I think it was important for Janek, because if someone is fragile, they really need boundaries and goals. The more lost we are, the more we need frameworks, rules. Wanda is more connected to herself – she can flow, she doesn't need to aim for a specific goal, although we subvert this goal a bit in the film – it's not the most important thing in life.

It seems to me that the film is a bit like a fairy tale for adults, only without the "happily ever after". The ending is unfinished, it would seem that the characters managed to communicate, but their problems did not disappear. Do you think that even stories without a classic happy ending can end happily in their own way?

The audience argues about the ending. This is a very funny film, but it is made against the rules of comedy and romantic comedies. Here, everything that is funny is also a bit sad. I was not interested in how this story would end – in my opinion, that is not what marriage is about. I think we make a huge mistake when we say that a relationship that lasted five or ten years was unsuccessful. After all, “until the grave” does not necessarily have to be the highest value we can give each other. It does not matter whether the characters stay together or not. Whether the relationship lasts years or ends in a week. The important thing is to see each other in this meeting, even if it is short.