Grażyna Hanaf: – “Profilerka” is a crime story about the murder of an entire family. A dead child appears in the opening scenes. It is very bold and unusual in films to show a murdered child.
Monika Jordan-Młodzianowska: – Crime stories sometimes deal with the deaths of children, but showing this directly is still taboo. My aim was to make this story credible. It can happen that, even in a quiet, peaceful tourist town, someone murders a family of four. And it can happen that a child is also among the victims. For me, the greatest challenge was to pursue the authenticity of this story and organize the world depicted in such a way that viewers would become involved and believe in it. That is why we decided not to spare the viewers and to show them the horror of this story. We would let them touch this tragedy, but also take a breath away from it. I decided to choose a boy who was vulnerable in his delicacy. This child acted wonderfully, bravely endured everything that happened there, and had some awareness that he was playing a murdered boy; he was very focused on his role.
– What kind of world did you create in this story? What universe exists there? Above all, the cinematography is beautiful. Why was this region of Poland chosen?
– When I read in the script that the story takes place near the Lithuanian border, in the Suwałki region, I initially associated it with Podlasie, for which I sincerely apologize, or with Masuria, for which I also apologize. So I am glad that I had the opportunity to bring these areas closer to viewers and show their subtle differences. As you know, I am a great fan of Lower Silesia, especially our part of it, and I personally believe there is no more beautiful place on earth than Lower Silesia in autumn, but I admit that the Suwałki region is equally beautiful. If anyone would like to compare the two regions, I sincerely encourage them to do so.
– Monika, you are from Bolesławiec, and you studied under Professor Czarnecka?
– I am. Let me tell you an interesting fact. When I meet people in different circles and places, even in distant countries, I start talking to someone and we click, what most often turns out to be the case? They are from Bolesławiec or the surrounding area, or at the furthest from Lower Silesia. I think this results from the fact that we were shaped in similar ways by the people who created the post-war history of this region. Our grandparents and parents came to these former German lands, often having lost everything and starting their lives over. This melting pot of human experiences and the differences connected with it is our enormous potential. The free exchange of ideas and an innate tendency to question reality are an intellectual luxury that we probably do not fully appreciate in everyday life.
– And returning to Professor Jolanta Ajlikow-Czarnecka...
– I was incredibly lucky to encounter such an extraordinary personality as Professor Jolanta Czarnecka. I cannot bear speaking about her in the past tense, because to me she is still alive, close and present. She played an extremely important role in my life. She was the first person—and a recognized authority at that—who fully understood and accepted my temperament. It was a formative experience for me, because the qualities for which I was usually criticized, she considered valuable, or at least qualities that could become valuable if I worked on myself appropriately. The professor was my true professor; she was my master. I remember that we had a ritual called “bathroom conversations”. During breaks between classes, we would lock ourselves in the restroom and, in short, blunt words, she would try to convey important, sometimes difficult ideas to me. Somewhere subconsciously, we both knew that our time was limited, and today I would say that she was trying to fill my hard drive. I also remember being afraid to tell her that I wanted to make films rather than paint pictures. It was unnecessary. She replied, “Fantastic!” She always gave me the space to exist with my ideas about who I wanted to be.
– Did your painting skills influence the cinematography in “Profilerka”? It is very painterly.
– Together with cinematographer Tomasz Wójcik, we decided to tell the story through “master shots”, meaning sequences of long, uninterrupted takes. This is a distinctly cinematic form of narration, technically difficult because it requires professional skills from every department. But if it succeeds, it produces spectacular results.
– It also required the animals, because I know they were off-screen heroes of the series.
– Yes, fortunately my colleagues share my enthusiasm for animals. Shortly before filming, I adopted a female dog named Mania, generally considered a Maltese. I knew filming was awaiting me, but there was no way around it. I said: somehow, we have to manage. And Mańka really did manage, because although she was generally distrustful and simply adapted poorly, she immediately found her place on set. She was somewhat like a gypsy dog among the crew. Of course, she always wore a harness with GPS so that we could locate her if necessary. Apart from that, she had considerable freedom to make her own decisions, and it turned out that she chose to follow me freely; she also easily settled on a blanket beneath the monitors.
– You also had some kittens left at your doorstep.
– Yes. Local people realized that filmmakers had a great fondness for animals, so three kittens were left with us; supposedly their mother had abandoned them. They were in poor condition, so the crew contributed money to save them. And as soon as those kittens were back on their feet, another three were left with us. They were even smaller and almost blind. We barely pulled them back from the brink of death. But in the end, all six were successfully raised and all of them were adopted.
– What goes around comes around?
– I think so. We are very happy that the series has more than a million viewers and that our work is being rated equally highly by critics.
“Profilerka” can be watched for free on TVP1 and on the VOD service at: vod.tvp.pl/seriale,18/profilerka-odcinki,1542691