Casting the actors

I knew that one of the first things on arrival in Poland I wanted to get done was to cast the actors. By now another location hunt has been organised this time to the other side of Poland, so with that on the horizon we started the actor search. Before we arrived in Poland the casting director had already chosen few actors to attend the audition, and we had our eye on a very particular actress who I was sure was going to play JADWIGA ( the lead character in the 15th century). When we arrived it turned out that the casting director did not feel comfortable speaking English so the baton was passed onto Marta and me. Casting for me is a love, hate experience. I really enjoy doing the initial part of the casting where you choose the actors from their photos and videos. Its like choosing the right colours for a painting. We made the decision to fly Daryl from Australia to play 15th Century JAN. (Below you'll see some before and after photos of him, lucky he looks good as a blond). Daryl has a very earthy energy I always imagined that Jadwiga would be ethereal. So the actress who we imagined would play Jadwiga did the audition and was great, but she had to come back for another audition against the actor who was going to play PAWEL.
The actresses in Poland are pretty amazing. The down fall of casting in Poland is that acting in film is perceived by far an inferior activity compared to acting in the theatre (which we later find out through a very unfortunate example).
So just as we think we can finish the female casting in walks Katarzyna Mazurek. At first I thought she was too young for Daryl and somehow too small. But as soon as she started acting something absolutely magical happened. One of the things I got them to do was just to chop some herbs ( as Jadwiga does that alot in the film) and my direction was to 'just chop, and not act' Much harder then it appears. She just did it... and then when I asked her to paraphrase the scene with her own words, and she was so present.
Now we had a choice on our hands, but I knew that situation like this always resolve themselves as they very soon did. Malgosia (our Polish Co-producer) warned me that good looking male actors in Poland very rare, but I was pleasantly surprised. As always in audition you get a couple of actors who turn out to be really inappropriate for the role, and as soon as they walk into the room you know, firstly they don't look anything like their photo and secondly they all want to be Robert De Nero. So Robert, after Robert, came in, there were a few Al Pacino's, and then in walked Pawel. Instantly I knew he was right for the part, I was so deeply hoping that he could act. The actors take their craft so seriously they really care which is a breath of fresh air. So he was great and when we matched him up with the women, the choice was obvious. It was obvious because Katarzyna was able to forget about her apperance and just be, and able to listen. Perhaps the beauty of the perviously prefered actress provented her from being 'present' and 'real'. Katarzyna had quite a task of asking her theatre headmaster for time off, to shoot the film. You would think that in your final year of acting, just before you enter the 'real world' the teachers would encourage outside work, especially when its' an International Feature Film.
She ended up crawling on her knees, as he sat in his office chair, with his hands crossed over his fat stomach enjoying the the spectacle of a young actress praying for his forgivess, as she dared to step into the filthy world of film making. Ohhh life!!!