Secret: a drag queen takes on history
Secret by Polish director Przemysław Wojcieszek will premiere this week-end in the Forum section at the 62th Berlinale. The director, who was first noticed for his two first features Kill Them All (1999) and Louder than Bombs (2002), has this time chosen as his main character a 30-year-old who metamorphoses into a nightclub drag queen at night. But beyond this nocturnal life, Ksawery, played by Tomasz Tyndyk, also confronts the shocking and painful fact that his grandfather, to whom he is very close, killed a Jewish man during the Second World War. While Ksawery is homosexual, his self-appointed agent Karolina is Jewish. Psychologically destroyed (“I am a cadavre, I am dead inside”), Ksawery however attempts to overcome the situation...
Tomasz Tyndyk, one of the first Polish actors to publicly announce his homosexuality, gives a remarkable performance. The actor is well-known for his work in theatre, in particular with Polish director Krzystof Warlikowski, but also for his acting in The Pianist by Roman Polanski, 0_1_0 by Piotr Lazarkiewicz, and Piggies by Robert Glinski. “Tomek has created a beautiful character, a very expressive one. The spectator follows him easily, enters his skin, and the story becomes out-of-the-ordinary, not schematic, almost non fiction,” Przemysław Wojcieszek explained to Cineuropa. “My aim was first and foremost to tell a story that was 100% contemporary in which history is merely a starting point for the very contemporary questions of difference, limits, and exclusion.“
Secret was shot using a HDSLR (High Definition Digital Single Reflex) on a very small overall budget of €120,000.
“We had to support ourselves with our own private funds,” said the director. “In Poland, a film about homosexuals never finds support from society or institutions, so we were not lucky enough to find funding. It’s probably the first Polish film in this genre, whereas in Europe queer cinema has been developing since the 1970s-1980s.”
Secret was produced by Dynamo Karuzela in co-production with the Nowe Horyzonty Association that will ensure its distribution in Polish cinemas.
(Translated from French)
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