Interview with Karolina Malinowska

DIRECTOR SCREENWRITER

Interview: Karolina Malinowska

Rain Within

The Official Selection

process of Top Quark's third season is extremely challenging due to the tremendous number of talented writers who sent us their works.

Today's interview with Karolina Malinowska was inevitable, as the events in her script resonate so strongly with our current future, although it is set in the future and the technology she is writing about is yet to be developed.

-What is your personal experience with VR technology and what is your opinion about it?

I’ve tried VR a handful of times over the past few years, and each time the leap forward has been striking. Even the early headsets could create a startling sense of presence: you’re somewhere else, while your body is still standing in the room. That gap raised a question I couldn’t let go of. Where do we really exist? If an experience lives only in our mind, is it any less real than one our body feels? And who decides what counts as real? Our memories are already a kind of simulation, rebuilt by the brain every time we return to them, and we rarely question them. In my story I imagined the next step: a technology that doesn’t stop at the eyes but works its way into the body itself, until the line between what happened and what we experience disappears. That technology is still being developed in the real world, which makes it fertile ground for fiction, and a dangerous one.

READY TO SHARE YOUR WORK WITH THE TOP QUARK FESTIVAL?

-Would you like to try such an immersive digital universe from your story and experience it yourself in real life?

I would like to try it. Imagine being able to talk again with someone you’ve lost: a parent, a partner, the person you loved most. Few things could be more tempting. But that’s exactly where the danger lies. A simulation like that could easily become a place to hide from grief rather than a way through it, a comfortable illusion we choose over a painful truth. The Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem used the genre to warn us about our devotion to technology, and I feel close to that. Our weakness as humans is how easily illusions sway us, and how eager we are to believe in something that isn’t real if it lets us escape what is. I want my film to show both sides: the promise and the price.

-How would you describe the main message of the story in one or two sentences?

The story is about a man forced to stop editing a memory and face what really happened. No technology can undo a death; at best it can be a mirror, and the only forgiveness worth having is the one we finally grant ourselves.

-Yellow candies are “rolling” through the entire story. What do they symbolise for you, and how would you like the audience and readers to see them?

I chose yellow because it’s often associated with mental instability, paranoia and obsession. The candies were really there at the moment the protagonist keeps trying to remember and relive. They’re a small, true detail from that event. As the story goes on, they keep reappearing, like breadcrumbs, and become the way his subconscious speaks to his conscious mind, quietly leading him back to the truth of what happened. I’d like the audience to notice them before they understand them, just as he does.

-Do you see the ending of your story as a happy ending or not, and why?

I’d rather leave that to the audience. The ending is written to start a conversation, and I’d love for people to have it after reading the script. For me, the story touches on a deeper question: are we terminal, or is something in us eternal? Our bodies end, but memories, guilt and love seem to outlive the moments that created them. Whether that is a comfort or a burden depends on who you ask. Redemption is just as personal, and everyone will see it differently. I don’t want to spoil anything for future readers, but I will say I already have an idea for how the story could continue in a sequel, so maybe I’ll leave it at that.

-Would you like to film your story one day and show it to the world?

Yes, very much. I’m a director first, and this story was always meant to be seen, not just read. While writing the short, I realised the world was bigger than the format allowed, so I’m now developing it into a feature. I’d love to bring it to the big screen, where the audience can be fully immersed in it, and then step out of the cinema still talking about what was real, what wasn’t, and what they keep in the dark themselves.