Malgorzata Szumowska quotes:

My film is very simple: An Eastern European story full of black humor about things everyone can feel and understand.

My films are doing well in Polish cinemas, so I don't really have problems financing them, and my international accolades are helpful.

In Poland, some people think that I'm kind of scandalous because I'm a woman who should stay at home with her kids instead of making movies about what I want and, even worse, addressing Polish taboos like church, homosexuals and history.

Poland and my roots are very important for me. That's why I decided to make a feature film in Poland, and with only Polish money.

The attitude of the Catholic Church towards homosexuality is well known - it is treated as something unnatural, even as a disease.

This mixture of Polish, not Polish, of being European, gives me a perspective to see Poland through "new eyes" - paradoxically, more closely... because it's from a kind of distance.

I found my personal style in black humor and mixing funny things with very touching ones - like trying to force people to cry and smile almost at the same moment.

I'm a producer, writer, director. I'm putting everything together very fast, and I'm strong and focused on making the next film as fast as possible. From one film to the other, I'm getting better. I'm learning - that's my style.

My horizons are also broadened by working with so many people around Europe. They taught me what I never would have learned just staying in my own country.

At the moment, I'm focusing on these kind of "small" films - maybe after that, I will make bigger films in English.

I wanted to make a film about anorexia. I thought about it for a long time, but then gave up on this idea as I felt that this theme would be so hermetic and closed that it would not reach an audience. However, the plot about the character of Olga and the idea that a body has a lot of different meanings were still present in my mind.

People don't understand that my films is not about being scandalous - it's about being critical of our own society.

A body - physical, astral, dead - might be treated as an object, might be adored and hated. So this story has emerged from the material that the body is.