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KARLOVY VARY 2021 East of the West

Grzegorz Jaroszuk • Director of Dear Ones

“I feel connected to characters that are in desperate need to feel some order in their life”

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- We met up with the Polish writer-director to talk through his film, its outlandish humour and his sources of inspiration

Grzegorz Jaroszuk • Director of Dear Ones

Presented in the East of the West strand of this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Dear Ones [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Grzegorz Jaroszuk
film profile
]
is an absurdist, outlandish dramedy revolving around a young man called Piotr, his sister Marta and his father searching for their mother who has gone missing without a word. The members of this estranged family embark on a long quest, and they will meet many bizarre characters along the way. We seized the opportunity to chat with Dear Ones’ writer-director, Grzegorz Jaroszuk, to talk through the making of his new feature.

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Cineuropa: How did the idea for the story come about?
Grzegorz Jaroszuk: In a film where you are the writer-director, there’s always some personal inspiration and experience to tell. I must say that my family isn’t as strange as the one depicted in the film, but I wanted to make a film about family. For me, family is a sort of “lab” where you can observe relationships. When you’re part of a family, you have to take part in these relationships, you can’t deny them. I wanted to make a film about people who can’t talk to each other, up to the point that things get really absurd. And that’s why this family doesn’t work. 

I would like to know more about Piotr. I believe he is the most complex character out of the three leads. Why did you decide to make him so superstitious and follow so many strange rituals?
I feel connected to characters who are in desperate need to feel some order in their life, up to the point that they begin looking for it almost everywhere. Piotr is a character who believes in several religions and many superstitions, because he’s desperate to find some way to express his feelings. He almost never goes out of his home, he even works there! I wrote the script before Covid and I found out that his life became that of many during the pandemic.

It’s a very realistic psychological mechanism. Piotr needs some kind of comfort zone, and at that moment of his life, that seems to work for him.
Exactly. He needs something safe and quiet to dive in.

How did you choose the three leads? Besides, Olaf Lubaszenko is a veteran of Polish cinema…
Olaf is a legend in Poland. He’s a very famous actor. What the father does is really selfish and irrational, and not a good deed, in a way. I felt that during the casting, I needed an actor with some special tenderness, a delicate man. That tenderness shows us why the father is weak, and not strong enough to tell the truth. Olaf has this special quality in the way he looks, in the way he talks... I found this kind of tenderness in his person. I was happy to have him onboard. In general, for my casting choices, I see many photos rather than watch videos. I think that Adam Bobik [the actor playing Piotr] and Iza Gwizdak [the actress playing Marta] are in a way similar, it’s plausible that they might be brother and sister. We did some rehearsals and pre-shooting sessions, and I thought they would work well together. Another actor I want to mention is Piotr Żurawski, “the Guy.” It’s the third time we’ve met on set and he’s a very special actor for me!

There are so many films portraying estranged families in European cinema. Here, there is no melodrama and no cliches of the genre, and you achieved a peculiar balance of realism and absurdism. How did the cast and crew contribute to said balance?
This is a big topic to tackle. There are some parts of this absurdity and realism already in the script, in the dialogues and circumstances. But except for the four main roles [the family and “the Guy”], for the secondary characters we kept on asking ourselves how to make them grotesque, picturesque but without going too far. That was the biggest challenge we faced with our costume designer, Hanka Podraza, and the make-up artist, Dorota Golinska. It may sound obvious, but making films is always about asking questions and making decisions. Finding this balance was all about making these small choices.

What about your work with composer Petr Ostruchov? How did his work tune into this kind of peculiar narrative atmosphere?
Thanks for asking this question. Meeting him has been a unique experience. It was one of those times when, as a director, you feel somebody understands you straight away. I sent him a link of the film, we had one meeting and then we talked about some sources of inspiration. To be honest, I presented him with one minute of some music I love, and that was it! The music was very sad, and there was no layer of absurdism or tension... In the second meeting, he presented his proposal. He left me in the room watching the film accompanied by his score. I thought: “Wow, he understood everything I wanted to be in the film.” It’s been amazing. I’m really grateful to Petr for the work he did.

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