Cineuropa chatted to Marek Kozakiewicz, a documentary director whose new film We Are Perfect [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
interview : Marek Kozakiewicz
fiche film] revolves around transgender and non-binary people, and which has had its international premiere in the Open Horizons competition section of the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival. The movie is a tender and honest look at young people who know who they are, yet struggle to feel accepted by their families and the world. Kozakiewicz’s previous film Silent Love [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film], about a gay couple, won awards at DOK Leipzig and Crossing Europe in Linz.

Cineuropa: The protagonists of We Are Perfect are transgender and non-heteronormative people who took part in an audition for the Netflix film Fanfic. But it’s not just a “making of” that you made.
Marek Kozakiewicz: I came up with an idea for a film when I saw the casting call. It was aimed at young non-binary and trans people. It was obvious that only one of them could succeed at the audition, but what about the rest of them? I wondered about the many people who responded to that call – who will they be? What they will have to say?

[The idea was that] they would reenact in the studio scenes that they knew from their own lives. I found this concept intriguing. Early on, I knew I didn’t want to make a film purely about the casting organised by Netflix; I wanted to use it to go deep into the daily lives of the selected participants and, through observation, show what it’s like for them to live in Poland. I pitched this idea to Orphan Studio, the film’s executive producer, and they convinced Netflix to make the independent, full-length documentary We Are Perfect.

Thirty people were invited for the audition, whittled down from the 300 who answered the casting call. Were you surprised that there were so many people who identified as a different sex to their biological one?
No. I think there are many more people like that in Poland. What surprised me, though, was the huge openness and maturity that these young people had when they were talking about themselves. That, as well as their vulnerability, sincerity, acute self-awareness and awareness of their identity. I wasn’t like that when I was their age. I’m a cis man, and I was a cis boy full of anxiety. Like most guys, I was afraid of being called a “faggot” or worse. I adhered to a stereotypical model of masculinity and hid my feminine part. I feel like the younger generation is smarter, and I learned a lot from my protagonists. Freedom, above all. The world wants to trap us in a pattern where everything has to be either male or female. It wants to tell us what the perfect man or the perfect woman should be like. These are societal constructs; it’s not me, it’s not you. We don’t need to be masculine or feminine any more. We can, but we don’t have to. We can be one thing today and a different thing tomorrow. It’s very liberating.

You also film the parents of your protagonists. How did you convince them to get on board the project?
There are three families in the film: Kajtek’s parents; the family of Wik, who decided to come out to them; and Alin’s father, to whom he talks openly and closely for the first time in years. Before filming each of them, we talked for hours, and wondered which direction we wanted to go in together and how the camera’s presence could help them. For example, Wik told us that he needed us to help him come out to his parents, because without a “whip” hovering over his head, he would never do it. So we became something positive for him. With his parents, it was more difficult because we couldn’t tell them why we wanted to film them. We explained that we were making a movie about Gen Z, and after Wik came out to them, we told them what We Are Perfect was really about and asked them if they wanted to be part of it. With Kajtek’s mum, it was much easier. She was open to filming; she knew how important it was for Kajtek and wanted to support him.  

Why did you include a Catholic priest in your film? Are there many men of the cloth supporting non-binary and transgender people in Poland?
This came from one of the protagonists, Gosia, for whom faith is important. She felt excluded from the Catholic community, and she didn’t know how to deal with it. We agreed that we would try to work it out together. The Polish Church is unfortunately rarely open or tolerant. The sermons often consist of words of hate, so the attitude of the priest in our film is unique. I hope he will pave the way for other clergymen to open up to LGBTQ+ people.