Presenting his fourth feature, Tell Me What You Feel [+lee también:
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entrevista: Łukasz Ronduda
ficha de la película], in IFFR’s Big Screen Competition, Łukasz Ronduda feels it’s a platform which best suits his work. He sat down with us to elaborate on his art-curator approach to filmmaking and disclosed some of his own personal views on modern-day love, intimacy and notions of masculinity.

Cineuropa: You work as a curator in visual arts, and the film partly takes place in an art museum. Why did you decide on a traditional narrative rather than a hybrid form?
Łukasz Ronduda: My background is in formal modernist and experimental cinema, but I’m interested in telling stories. You can see avant-garde influences in the film’s form – I was swayed by constructivist avant-garde, especially Polish artists fascinated by montage theory and formalist cinema. I take this formal stuff and try to make it more emotional and human, taking an interest in how streams of consciousness work, so I tried to invite the viewer into the inner world of the film’s main character, to stay very close to him.

But the film remains very coherent, avoiding a fragmentary approach and preserving the whole.
Yes, I’m definitely interested in preserving the whole. I’m coming to film as an art historian and a curator, and my approach is different to visual artists’. I was always the person telling stories about art, not the person making paintings or sculptures. As a curator, when you’re putting on a group exhibition, you work with many different artists and you have to create a coherent structure, a narrative, almost. Making a film is a similar process. I think I’m good at inspiring people and building a sense of unity.

The film features irrational forces like love and trauma, but it keeps an analytical distance. How did you strike that balance?
I’m happy you picked up on that. My interest in these young people came from two contradictory feelings. On the one hand, I was fascinated by how conscious and therapised they were, how well they understand their emotions. When they fall in love, they know exactly which psychological mechanisms are activated. But, on the other hand, this is unusual to me. I remember falling in love when I was younger – it was very romantic, very emotional, with no thought involved. These days, young people’s love has both elements: emotions and consciousness. They’re immersed in love, but because of therapeutic discourse they’re also distanced from it. That contradiction interested me. They behave a bit like older people who keep a distance from their emotions as a result of experience and therapy.

At a certain point, analysis seems to become destructive. Do you see over-analysis as a problem when it comes to love?
Sometimes we fall in love not to build a relationship that will last forever, but to learn something about ourselves. We have this romantic perception that people should stay together forever but love is more complicated nowadays. There aren’t many films about how people should separate with understanding, or reassuring us that it’s okay. People suffer a lot when they split up, but sometimes it’s very healthy. I wanted to portray modern love in all its temporality.

What about the decision to include a couple whose social statuses clash?
The action partly takes place around a real art project in Lublin called the “Tear Dealer”, in a very poor district. People in economic crisis could sell their tears for money. I was shocked by this project but also inspired. I remember the 1990s in Poland, the transition from communism to capitalism. Society was very equal in the beginning. 30 years on, we have huge economic inequalities and real polarisation. In the film, I explore how class affects how we connect with our emotions. Maria comes from a privileged urban background and has access to therapy. Patrick grew up in a village and a broken family, and he’s emotionally blocked. I wanted to show how social inequalities shape emotional life, because awareness is also a privilege. If you don’t have to survive all the time, you can focus on your inner world.

New models of masculinity are also central to the film.
This is very important politically in Poland today. Young men from smaller cities and villages are often neglected, they’re very alone, and becoming radicalised. They fuel right-wing politics and toxic models of masculinity. I wanted to show a different model: a sensitive, heterosexual man. In Poland, when a man is vulnerable, there often isn’t space for him within heterosexual masculinity. Showing alternative models is very important to me.

How did you choose the actors? Their performances feel very natural.
I wanted faces that weren’t recognisable, actors who hadn’t appeared very much in Polish cinema. After we found Jan Sałasiński and Izabella Dudziake, we rehearsed for a long time – almost a year with Jan and half a year with Izabella. We developed the characters very closely in line with their personalities; they shared their own experiences and stories. It was a really intense and generous process, and I learned a lot from them.