A well-known TV star in her native Poland, Marta Król is making an impact on the international film festival circuit as Renata in Piotr Ryczko’s I Am REN. A gripping account of a woman who, suffering a breakdown, believes herself to be a malfunctioning android (read our review here), the film hinges on Król’s first-rate performance. In advance of I Am REN’s screening online at Grimmfest 2020 in October, Ian Winterton chatted to Marta about the challenges of playing such a complex character while honouring the memory of the director’s late mother, whose  schizophrenia inspired the film.

How did you first become involved with this project?

I knew Piotr from Film school and he called me to talk about, not the film script, but the novel he was going to publish which was called Panacea. He wrote that first, then the script. He wrote it in English – you can find it on Amazon still. It was very interesting to me, so fresh and vivid, and I loved it from the first time I read it. So we started to talk about it. I had a few casting sessions with him, because he had another actress he might have gone with, but he chose me in the end. It’s his feature film debut, although he had made several shorts before and won some awards. He’s a unique and talented artist so I was keen to work with him. And I love that the story is an interesting mix of sci-fi and psychological thriller.

The film is dedicated to Piotr’s mother – ‘Mum, for you – wherever you are’ – who suffered from schizophrenia. You must have felt a great deal of responsibility to do justice to what, for Piotr, was such a personal project?

Of course, yes, but during the shoot I tried not to think too much about this. I concentrated on what it was to play this woman, Renata. We don’t know whether she’s really an android or just imagining that she is, so in some ways that was the hardest challenge. But really, to play Renata, the ‘reality’ isn’t important because it’s the confusion in her mind that matters: she thinks she’s an android and, most importantly, that she’s an android who has a malfunction and that this is something she must try and keep secret.

This, of course, is relevant to people suffering from mental illness – that fear of not being ‘normal’ and the urge to keep that secret from the rest of society.

And Renata’s situation is particularly relevant to women. Sometimes as a woman we can feel like robots – cooking, cleaning, kids, school and so on – and under the pressure society puts us under we can break.

In the film Renata is deemed to be over-emotional – an accusation often levelled at ‘hysterical’ women – which also ties in with a theme common to other AI movies such as Blade Runner, that the androids are more human than the humans – and that feeling emotion too keenly is what leads them to malfunction.

Which also has parallels with mental illness – the inability not to control one’s emotions, to feel everything too intensely. Piotr and I talked a lot about feelings, like what’s the difference between the feelings of an android and a human being? We asked ourselves what if Renata could feel, but feel even more intensely than humans and she can’t do anything about it? But, yes, I think what you said is right, that the film works on many levels – it’s not a typical film about robots, it’s about women. It’s interesting because Piotr is a man and he really feels women. Every script he has written has been about women. In I Am REN, obviously it says a lot about women’s place in society. Sometimes as a woman we can feel like robots: cooking, cleaning, kids, school and so on. When I first saw the film at the Warsaw Film Festival I realised it’s not just about mental illness – it’s about modern women too. The pressure to be perfect mothers, perfect partners, to work hard at the career too. We can break not just our hearts but break psychologically too.

And then there’s the ever-present suspicion that Renata, whether or not she’s an android, is actually the victim of her husband’s abuse? Did you discuss the coercive control and domestic violence aspects?

Not so much, it was more just how best for me to portray Renata’s mental state – her fear, her confusion. It started with Piotr telling me his personal story, about his mother and her illness. He carried this in himself and he wanted to find a metaphor for it in this film. To work on such a subtle and gentle thing, he had to trust me, and I had to trust him. We talked a lot about it and had many meetings and rehearsals, even before the rest of the film’s crew and cast were put together.

And the majority of the shoot took place in the location as we see it in the film – isolated cabins in the woods?

Yes, and that was great. Two weeks we were cut off from everything else and that helped build the environment I needed. Piotr and the crew created an atmosphere where we could feel very open, very safe. When you’re working on these subtle emotions you have to be vulnerable and it’s easy to hurt, but when you’ve got the right space you can give it your best – you’ve got that trust. But it was freezing cold, too – sometimes minus 20. But we were all so focused on the work that we didn’t really feel it – I sometimes didn’t realise I was actually shivering from the cold because the adrenalin of performing just took over.

Renata gets an ally of sorts in Ella, played by Marieta Zukowska, who’s pretty well known in Poland. Had you worked with her before?

I didn’t know her before, no, but the working environment meant that when we met it was like we knew each other already. The scenes were intense, but so rewarding as an actor – the sort of working relationship actors dream of. But Marieta’s character, Ella, wasn’t in the story or the script originally. But Piotr created her and I thought that really worked, giving Renata a friend, sort of, in the android world. And, of course, we don’t know if Ella is really an android or just another person at a psychiatric institute.

Like the rest of the world, I Am REN’s introduction to the world has been derailed by Covid-19. You even had to cancel your premiere I understand?

Yes. We were scheduled to premiere in a cinema in Warsaw on April 17th, but it was cancelled. We had it eventually in June. But we were booked in at so many film festivals around the world and most of those have been postponed. Some, though, like Grimmfest, have gone online. But it’s weird with lockdown, because I think the feelings we touch on in the film are exacerbated. We all feel sometimes like we are in prison – we can’t do many things that we could before. It affects people. We’re getting good reviews, though, and Piotr was given the Festival Director’s Award at the Boston Sci-Fi Festival in the USA, and I received a special mention for the Méliès d’argent Award at Trieste. So, it’s going well.

And I think this could be an excellent film to introduce you to the world outside Poland. Would you like to work in Hollywood?

Of course! But also in UK – you have so many great TV dramas over there that I’d love to work on. But we’ll just see what happens – after Covid-19!

 

I am REN will feature in Grimmfest 2020. For more details click here

Thanks to Katie Bevell for assistance with this interview.