Polish author and pedagogue Janusz Korczak wrote King Matt the First [+lee también:
entrevista: Jaśmina Wójcik
ficha de la película] in the 1920s, about a young prince taking over the throne after his father’s sudden death. Now, director Jaśmina Wójcik subtly revisits the classic in her Hot Docs-screened documentary King Matt the First while also accompanying her own children, Zoja and Lea Wróblewska, on their own adventures – and during the pandemic.

Cineuropa: Many films feature children, but not all of them capture how they think or communicate. Were you interested in showing them all alone, without adult supervision, even though they address those lurking behind the camera?
Jaśmina Wójcik: In the film, the adult provides the framework of security but doesn’t interfere. Before the shoot, we did some workshops together, and during one of them, the children rebelled. As you said, they didn’t want adult supervision: they wanted to be left alone. It felt very authentic to me because when I look back on my own childhood, we were just running around with other kids, establishing our own rules. Today, when it’s all about parental control, we need to give children their freedom. They need it to learn – on their own and from each other. And we need to learn how to let go.

Was it hard to convince your girls to talk freely? Sometimes children censor themselves when they think someone won’t understand or will laugh at them.
We’d been making this film for four years. There were moments, especially after two years, when they were tired. They didn’t want to continue, and we listened. After a while, something started happening again, but it was an ongoing conversation between the girls, the cinematographer, Jakub Wróblewski, who’s also their father, and me. It was a new situation for us as a family because it wasn’t just another conversation at breakfast. They were aware of it.

At first, they weren’t even supposed to be the protagonists. I wanted to follow a diverse group of children, but then the pandemic hit. We ran away from the city, and the girls would spend their days in the garden. They were six and eight years old back then. We started filming them there. They actually listened to King Matt the First very intensely even before; they were acting it out. When I did a Zoom workshop about it with other children, we talked about its themes. Matt’s isolation, the fact that he couldn’t go beyond the gates of his royal garden, really spoke to the kids. After all, they were also sitting at home and couldn’t leave.

I remember the book: it offered a whole new approach to children’s issues. It took them seriously.
I read it at school, but I didn’t like it back then. It was too painful. As a child, I wanted happy endings. I wanted everyone to be safe, which is why I was so surprised when my daughters listened to it non-stop. I checked with my friends, and their children loved it as well. Matt tries to rule with his childish naivete, and he’s deceived by his best friend and by adults who attack him when he’s at his weakest. In the end, he’s sent to a deserted island. For what? For his good will. In its introduction, it says it’s written for children, not for adults, “because adults won’t understand it anyway”.

Korczak wrote it after World War I – he wrote it for the children who survived, and he wrote it with them. Today, kids are also constantly attacked by messages about wars, about never-ending crises. I work with different groups of children, and our education system isn’t always on their side. Adults demand things from children, but they don’t listen to them. We can learn so much from this book, and from Korczak – from his approach, his self-criticism. He would admit to his failures. It’s so liberating when teachers, or parents, can do that.

How can you talk to children about war? Korczak, who was the principal of an orphanage, ended up in the Treblinka extermination camp with children who were sent there. He refused to abandon them.
We started talking about war in 2020. It’s mentioned in King Matt, but it’s still understood as child’s play. Later, in 2022, a full-scale Russian aggression on Ukraine started, and these descriptions started to feel different. The girls would talk about how they felt about the invasion, about their fears. Something that had to do with the distant past suddenly turned out to be the reality of our nearest neighbours.

In the film, we see them in the garden, but we don’t know who they are. Are you interested in making films that don’t explain too much?
I love to allow viewers some space. These first images of the girls, surrounded by nature… You understand it has something to do with the pandemic, but why are they alone? They found incredible relief there, even despite this being a terrible time.

Why did you go with the book’s title also for the film? For the international audience, it could be quite puzzling.
It indicates this book will be a large part of the film. It’s not an adaptation, and the girls don’t read it any more, but Matt’s spirit and the spirit of Korczak is still there. Or this idea that, in the end, adulthood can be viewed as a failure. As we grow up, we often forget how it felt when we were children. We’re always rushing, but it’s important to look at ourselves and really experience melancholy, sadness or fear. It’s okay to feel them. They will pass because everything passes. Our future is unknown, but that’s fine. You’ll get there one day, so try to be in the here and now.