"This is the movie that I wanted to do"

No filming since 1991, Four Nights with Anna is her first movie since Ferdydurke. Preferred devoted himself to painting. Why such a long absence? It was disappointed with the film?

I was very unhappy with my last movie, Ferdydurke. I felt I was going the wrong way and thought it had to rethink my career. So I decided to take a break. Except that it was not planned so long. And that got me enough time to devote to the great passion of my life, the painting in my house in Malibu, USA.

Like most of painting than cinema?

You know, it was my first passion. When I was very young I wanted to be painter, studying in Fine Arts, but could not do for political reasons. We were in full and comunismo my origins were not advisable. I have some aristocratic blood and my father was on the wrong side of the anti-German resistance in World War II to the right and not left. So instead of going to study painting in the Fine Arts, dedicated me to archeology and ethnography, and then to the movies. But I never stopped painting, even when I became a director. And I was refining the same style, but never had time to paint professionally, to devote myself to painting in earnest. This long hiatus in film has allowed me this, and immediately began to lay out to sell the paintings galleries and private collectors, some of the world of cinema, like Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper. And built a career as an artist seriously, without making any compromises trade.

Extracted the story of Four Nights with Anna news of a newspaper, right?

Yes, I read it many years ago in The Los Angeles Times, a chamber of curiosities. A Japanese very shy hinders the window at night at home of woman who loved the distance, only to see it to sleep. This kept up for the film and everything else.

I always wanted to do this movie in Poland and no U.S. or other Western European country?

Yes, because only in Poland could have the necessary freedom and total control of the project. In the U.S., even if I rodasse with a small budget, on an independent, would always interference from the producer, actors ... There soon egos in the way. In Poland I could do exactly what he wanted. Each second, each frame of Four Nights with Anna, is my sole responsibility was made exactly as I wanted. This is the movie that I wanted to do.

The character of Leon, the poor devil who enters the room of Anna, the nurse, every night to see it to sleep, awakening to the ambiguous feelings. On the one hand, we pity him, but at another, do not endorse what he is doing. It is a nuisance behavior and something sinister ...

Exactly. The things he does not fit in any moral or ethical code. He is forcing entry to the premises of another. But at the same time, we understand why they do what Leon: He has a great passion for that woman. This does not mean apologize. That's what I like in this movie, the moral ambiguity. To what extent can we accept what he does? Their intentions are always good, the way he is the embodiment not. There will be people who will say that their actions are totally wrong from the start. Others have a contrary view. And I did not want to situate the film specifically in Poland, so that people feel that this story could go anywhere in the world with anyone.

Artur Steranko, who plays Leon, is well known in Poland?

Completely unknown. I saw about 150 actors of all ages for the role, but always wanted an unknown man, and someone who already was a bit like Leon. Until I said that in a theater in northern Poland had a very talented player who had a stroke a few years ago, and that he had left a few marks and the physical memory. I went there and see him when Arthur broke the door of the office of the director of the theater, and much to fear peek into it, he said to me: "It is this!"