I was absolutely thrilled. By how she lived, how sensually she described her everyday life and relations with family. I adored her style. Compact, to the point, full of intelligent, witty humour. We both loved life, we’d both enjoyed it with a similar sensitivity and our paths had to cross sooner or later.
From Chustka I found out that Joanna would be a guest of Klub Księgarza, where a radio reportage about her would be presented. When Tomek – Tomasz Średniawa, co-creator of Joanna’s script, privately my life partner – came back from work, I handed him the baby and I ran to the meeting. During the broadcast, when Jasio’s voice appeared, Joanna couldn’t handle her emotions and she left. After a while I went after her. Barely visible, she was standing in a dark, empty room, with her back turned at me. I thought she looked frail. Sounds of the reportage came from the speakers – the reader quoted fragments of Joanna’s blog.
I went to her, I introduced myself. She knew who I was, because we’d previously been in contact by e-mail. We stared at each other in silence for a longer while, teardrops ran down. I felt it was a mutual, incredible closeness, a strange feeling to have on a first meeting, but that’s how it was.
I told her that I wanted to make a film about her. She replied that she’d already had propositions like that from popular directors and she turned down all of them. I asked her to give me one minute, during which I told her how I wanted to preserve her history in the film. I added, that if after this one minute she says “no”, I would never hassle her again. Two days later we began shooting.
How much time did you spend with Joanna Sałyga and her family? In what period was the film shot exactly?
We started filming in April 2012 and we ended in August. Joanna died in October of the same year. We had 13 shooting days. However, we spent much more time together. Off the set, in private. I visited her in hospital as well. We talked a lot, both about trivial and important issues, we shared our thoughts. We talked about life, death, the illness. About “here and now” and about “there and later”. Sometimes we cried, sometimes we just sat next to each other. We were getting to know each other and we built a relationship. Most of the camerawork was done in Joanna’s home near Warsaw and in the Masurian lake district.