Cineuropa sat down with Maciej Sobieszczański, the writer-director of Through the Wall, which is having its international premiere at the Warsaw Film Festival. The film previously emerged as a surprise winner at the Golden Lions at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. Sobieszczański discusses how the film came about, and his approach to portraying an awareness of evil – and love as a redemptive force to combat it.

Cineuropa: Can you tap out a message in Morse code?
Maciej Sobieszczański: .--- . ... - / - .- -- / -.- - --- ...-... ..--.. [meaning “Is anyone there?” in Polish]

How did you come across the story of Jerzy and Wiesława Śmiechowski, and how did you decide that a love story that began with a conversation in Morse code in a Stalinist prison could be translated into the language of cinema?
It all started with my friend Kuba Kamiński. In the middle of the pandemic, he brought me a documentary about the Śmiechowskis, made by his father, and suggested I watch it. I was sceptical at first. I didn’t want to make another film about violence, but the documentary moved me. Jerzy spoke about his life and professional achievements, including founding one of Poland’s largest bakeries, Piekarnia Szwajcarska. He said he couldn’t complain about his lot in life, but only one thing had turned out exactly as he had hoped: his relationship with Wiesława. I was struck by the emotion and conviction with which he spoke. Together, they seemed to embody the belief that love can carry us through the most difficult experiences. I recognised this from my own life, as my grandmother remained faithful to my grandfather for 55 years after his death. Through her, I understood how such a bond can shape us from within and save us. I feel that this story found me, as though the Śmiechowskis had been looking for the right person to tell it.

We’re speaking, of course, metaphorically, since Jerzy died in 2008 and Wiesława in 2011.
Their son, Wojciech, told me that his parents had been reluctant to have a film made about them because they feared it would become a Hollywood-style love story. For months, I tried to persuade him to talk to me about their story. When I showed the film to him and his children, Jerzy and Wiesława’s grandchildren, he was deeply moved. He said his parents would have been happy to see it because it contained none of the sentimentality they had feared.

I wanted to do more than tell the story of a love that had survived against all odds; I was also interested in the world in which it had to exist. Stalinism in post-war Poland is extraordinarily cinematic: a reality steeped in violence, fear and ruthlessness, providing a powerful contrast to what is good in human beings.

Violence is palpable in your film, even though it often remains off screen. Was that a conscious choice?
I knew I didn’t want to show acts of violence themselves. My previous experiences had taught me how emotionally taxing such stories could be. I had to find a way to tell a story about violence without making it the film’s central subject. I decided to focus on its consequences: people bearing the marks of what happened to them, rather than the moment when the harm was inflicted. This approach engages the viewer’s imagination, sometimes more powerfully than a direct depiction. It also let me focus on love existing in a world built on violence, and on the choices the characters make.

In your movie, good and evil are not merely abstract concepts; they are tied to the concrete decisions that people make.
I believe human beings are capable of both good and evil. We cannot treat evil as though it came out of nowhere and had nothing to do with us. We must recognise our own responsibility. That is why I wanted even the characters who commit cruel acts to be aware of their choices. I gave Agnieszka Grochowska’s character something extraordinary: an awareness that she is evil. She knows she chooses evil every day, just as Jerzy and Wiesława choose good. I wanted viewers to feel that my characters are not merely puppets in the hands of history, but people just like us.

In real life, it is rare for someone to know that they are evil and that it is their choice. This is also my way of taking a stand against the reality around us: what we see in Ukraine and Palestine, the evil unfolding before our eyes. As artists, we must firmly oppose it. People often say that Through the Wall is a story about love. I see it as a cinematic essay on love, reflecting on whether we can stand up to evil and what we have to offer in response. I’m deeply convinced that the only answer is love.

How do young audiences respond to your film?
Younger generations struggle to talk intimately about their feelings, as we do in the film. They’re closed off, absorbed in their phones and laptops. A tender, gentle language of feelings makes a tremendous impression on them. This isn’t simply about someone falling in love and going through the usual, banal sequence of events: a boy meets a girl, loses her, then gets her back. That formula didn’t interest me at all.

I think what makes the greatest impression on young people is that I’m not afraid of intimacy and share it with them, despite my introversion. I still get emotional watching the wedding scene, even though I wrote it and have seen it 100 times. The moment when the characters say, “I do” is simple and moving. There is a kind of magic in that scene that draws us into their love. We can bask in its warmth and feel safe, if only for a moment.