The award was granted in Rome to a Polish actress and debuting director in the category: Cinema del reale (Cinema of Reality).
The documentary “The Wall” had its premiere at the Rome Film Festival last year. Then it was presented at various festivals, also in Poland.
“What happened on the border changed my life, my priorities as an actress. I’ve been telling stories for 20 years, it’s my sweat and blood, but the story that surrounded me was much more interesting,” she said after receiving the award. Kasia Smutniak, quoted by Ansa. “I’m not a political activist, but I had to do something,” she added.
In one of the interviews after the ceremony, she also said: “This wall has become my true obsession and the starting point to talk about the human fate, the historical moment in which we live.” Moreover, she confessed that she would like to analyze deeply human topics in her future work.
“The Wall” is a moving documentary about the situation on the Polish-Belarusian border, which Smutniak also talks about in the context of his personal and family experiences. The actress became interested in this topic at the very beginning, in August 2021. In November of the same year, together with activists from Poland and Italy, she shot a reportage for the Italian program Propaganda Live, which had a great impact in Italy.
“From the beginning, it has been an unusual project. We decided to do something completely different. The film was not released in cinemas in a traditional way, because the life of documentaries in cinemas is very short. In order to reach a wider group and meet viewers, I have been traveling around Italy for three weeks. We do screenings in cinemas, debates” – she said before the Polish premiere of the film in an interview with Interia. “I am very happy with the reception, because the halls are full. This way of showing the film in the cinema and the opportunity to meet and discuss with the audience is something amazing for me. Yesterday I returned from the screening after one in the morning. In the first week it was not so obvious, but since the second week the shows have been sold out. This is a tiny documentary about the situation on the Polish border, but I tried to make something very universal,” she added.
The leitmotif of the documentary is the wall that stood on the Polish-Belarusian border and it became an excuse to juxtapose two perspectives: contemporary and historical with personal, family history, which Kasia Smutniak shows, not being afraid of honesty and important conversations.
“I have been working as an actress and dealing with emotions for twenty years. This profession forces me to really deeply analyze myself, my emotions, but also often the things that we are afraid of, e.g. dealing with the past, etc. At some point, my life became something different, new . After twenty years of telling other people’s stories, my everyday life seemed more interesting than any other stories I could play. Reality exceeded fantasy. The second element is that this was really all I could do. I am not a doctor, lawyer or politician “I used the tools I had at hand, I had the opportunity to do it and I did it” – this is how Smutniak explained her need to make a film.
The film features, among others: activist Man of the Forest, i.e. Mariusz Kurnyta, Jakub Sypiański, representatives of the Border Guard, as well as Kasia Smutniak’s father and grandmother, or her family living in the countryside near the border with Ukraine. In an interview with Interia, the director also talked about how “The Wall” was created and how she convinced her interlocutors to participate in it.
“From the very beginning, it was obvious that it was impossible to record it in a classic way, to go somewhere with a crew. It was impossible to walk around the surrounding towns with a camera. How to convince people who risk their lives to do this… That was the moment which activists and residents were already very tired, tired and powerless. During the peak of the crisis in Kuźnica, they talked to the media, publicized the case, but it led to nothing. So it was difficult for me to convince them to share their time with me. Every moment was being separated either from family or from helping others. I was aware of that,” she admitted.