17/07/2025 - The Slovak-born, Berlin-based director talks about the making of her film, and her shift from character-driven storytelling to a collage approach

(© Film Servis Festival Karlovy Vary)

Slovak-born, Berlin-based filmmaker and visual artist Paula Ďurinová continues her exploration of emotional landscapes and collective resistance in her second film, Action Item [+see also:
film review
interview: Paula Ďurinová
film profile], which premiered at the 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, in the Proxima competition. Cineuropa spoke with Ďurinová about her shift from character-driven storytelling to a collage approach, and the politics of mental health.

Cineuropa: Action Item addresses anxiety as a public secret, rather than a private pathology. What initially drew you to explore this redefinition through film?
Paula Ďurinová: I’ve been interested in topics surrounding mental health for a long time. For Action Item, it initially stemmed from my own experience with anxiety and depression, and later, more significantly, from a period of burnout I went through several years ago. I realised I needed to understand what had happened. I started reading mainly self-published zines and various essays that focused on critiques of the privatisation of mental health. These texts explored mental health from a more political perspective. They often combined personal experiences with theory and helped guide me through the process of making the film. A core inspiration also came from my participation in several Berlin-based consciousness-raising and support groups. Through all of this, my internalised view of anxiety as something purely personal began to shift.

In the beginning, you follow one protagonist, Eliana, but then the focus turns to a bunch of people in what looks like group therapy. Why did you incorporate more people instead of focusing on the protagonist from the beginning?
This shift from an individual protagonist to a group was always something I wanted to include in the movie. The story begins with Eliana processing her experience of burnout, and as she searches for a broader context, she talks to friends and eventually becomes part of a group that collectively explores their individual experiences while also looking for systemic subtext in their relationships. This was inspired by my own experience, and for the film, it was developed together with the protagonists, with whom I shared an interest in approaching mental health from this perspective.

The film mirrors your own personal journey with burnout and anxiety. How did you tread the line between autobiography and observation?
When Eliana and I first talked about her experience of burnout, there was this uncanny excitement in discovering how much we had in common. We were both very interested in discussing which parts of our experiences might be shaped by systemic influences. During this process, I had to remind myself not to project aspects of my own experience onto Eliana’s, and to recognise and acknowledge the agency in how she chose to share it. This was something we often talked about together. With the film, I wanted to create a space for processing experiences, and also for finding the words to talk about them and to put them into context.

We see a combination of verité-style observation and found footage. How did you approach the visual composition of this collage?
At the time we started filming, the project was taking shape more as a character-driven observational film, with Radka Šišuláková as the main cinematographer. It was often difficult to navigate the production, as I was based in Berlin and Radka in Slovakia. So, it happened quite naturally that we began collaborating with Clara Becking and Darya Chernyak as cinematographers as well. Throughout this process, I would often film city images on my own. The collage aspect came from a specific turning point, when we decided to pause the project because I needed time to process the grief after the loss of my grandparents. That pause eventually developed into a larger project, from which my debut, Lapilli [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paula Ďurinová
film profile], emerged. When I returned to Action Item after this break, I revisited the footage we had filmed and also realised that I was struggling with the character-driven format as a director. I felt more at ease in the essayistic realm.

What was your approach to working with non-professional participants in a setting that blends reality and facilitation?
I wanted to bring together a group of people who didn’t necessarily know each other beforehand. I was mainly inspired by the mode of facilitation I had encountered in the consciousness-raising groups I took part in while in Berlin. We first filmed with a wider group of people, out of which the group of Jasmine, Sam, Alžběta and Eliana gradually formed. They had all had experience with either anxiety, burnout, depression or invisible chronic illness, and also with therapy, various facilitation methods or self-care practices. We compiled a selection of texts that we wanted to use as inspiration to begin sharing personal experiences, and we also set out some specific themes for several of the meetings we filmed.

Would you say Action Item is a form of activist filmmaking?
I don’t have a specific definition of activism within the documentary form. Personally, I find many films to be activist, even if they weren’t necessarily intended that way. Action Item addresses topics that I felt were important to communicate. It’s about community building, actively listening to each other’s experiences and learning from them, supporting one another and being intersectional in our struggles. With the film, I also wanted to acknowledge the work of many people who fight daily for rights and justice, and to recognise how the politics of destruction, violence and a crumbling democracy affect our mental health.