So It Doesn't Hurt

In 1974, the Polish filmmaker Marcel Lozinski visited the farmer/intellectual Urszula Flis, who had decided to stay in her village to work there in solitude. At the time, a young interviewer asked Urszula some hard and confrontational questions. For example, whether she thought she could be happy as a single woman among her fellow-villagers who she really looked down on, and whether she, as an intellectual, would not miss cultural life too much. In ZEBY NIE BOLALO, the same crew pays a renewed visit to the woman 23 years later, and again asks her about her thoughts, fears and feelings. The literature-loving woman, equally eloquent, secluded and sensitive, is forced by the film to evaluate herself and her life, and eventually questions the morality of the documentary portrait. Who wants to hear a story about somebody else‘s shortcomings, about her real or imaginary grief? And in what way does this enforced self-reflection affect the one portrayed?