Actors: The Art of Being Seen
The Secret Life of a Film
Firstly I want to wish you the happiest of holidays as we now count down the days to 2026! and thank you for being part of this community.
I want to share with you where we are at with the film.
Over the past six weeks, I’ve been moving through our footage, take by take, cataloging what feels essential in each — the timing, the feeling, the length. Watching has become almost hypnotic, not just for what is there, but for what is emerging. Takes I once thought central are now eclipsed by others: gestures of stillness, pauses, glances, moments of unexpected truth, sometimes in takes that may be less technically “perfect” but more alive. Occasionally, an actor does something completely unexpected, and the air in the room shifts, tense, electric, alive, as if a new energy has quietly entered. Moments like these remind me of the true power of casting.
you are fixing someone’s face/body into cultural memory
you are shaping how a story will be remembered
you don’t get to revise it later
A French casting agent once told me it was like choosing colours for a painting. Each actor brings a hue, a texture, a vibration. The palette is delicate; the combination shapes the emotional tone of the story. Their gestures, their silences become part of the story’s DNA. For this film, casting was a careful balance. Actors I had previously worked with, Kasia Mazurek as Karolina and Tomasz Borkowski as Dariusz, became the “colours” around which the rest of the cast was shaped. And then, we took risks.
Casting Alicia Borkowska, a twelve-year-old pianist and the real-life daughter of our lead actress, was a leap. She had never acted before and this is her debut feature film, and she is magnificent in the role.
Also combining professional actors with real people. Franek Farbaniec, who plays Krzysztof ( Karolina’s father) whose house we filmed in and whose physicality mirrors Karolina’s, introduced challenges no film school can prepare you for, as they are more about intuition then any technique of leading an actor into a performance.
Yet the creative upsides were immense. Alicia brings a closeness to the role that cannot be fabricated. Pan Franek carries the history of eighty years in his posture, his nest of furniture, his presence. Together, they inhabit a familial rhythm that feels lived-in, authentic.
Finding him was nothing short of a miracle, and his performance quietly anchors the story. Here I created the tone of the family.
Photo by Michał Woźny
Casting is also a negotiation with unpredictability. You hold a precise vision, yet have to remain open, almost tender, to the surprises of who will inhabit the roles.
Once Karolina was cast, it became clear that Julia played by Anna Marais had to be her counterpoint. Once Pan Franek was cast, his best friend Stanislaw played by Lech Łotocki needed to carry the sensitivity of embodied empathy.
The right actors create the emotional architecture of the film. and at the end of the day, they leave.
The actors step back into their own lives, their own next roles, and the room empties of the presence that has been so alive.
What remains is the sense that something was created together that could not have existed without them. The film carries that intimacy, but it leaves you a little heartbroken, for the moments of shared vulnerability, for the invisible thread of trust and energy now drifting quietly into memory.
It is a small, necessary ache, a sort of proof that the work mattered, that it carried life and risk, and that in letting them go, you honour both the art and the human beings who brought it to life. And in their absence, the story is being built one cut at a time.
Annika xx
