Krzysztof ZANUSSI: “I am not going to die for I love life too much”

There were a lot of steep turns in his life. He was friends with John Paul II, Vaclav Havel, and many other interesting people. There are still many things that link him with Ukraine. This is all about Krzysztof Zanussi, famous Polish film director, who came to Kyiv to present his new book Time to Die.

Film director explained right away that he is not going to die voluntarily because he loves life too much and the name of the book is simply allegorical. It is associated with the biblical stories. Once the Apostle Paul said that an old man shall die in us and a new man shall be born. Zanussi himself characterized his book as an assertion of the fact that it is time to put an end to “Soviet spirit” in ourselves and move on, stop worshiping leaders and understand that we are those, who form our country.

Following the topic, the moderator of the meeting Serhii Trymbach asked about changes in Ukraine, why are they less noticeable than in Poland. Zanussi then spoke about Ukrainian reality: “I want to say that maybe when you are a part of the process and look at it from the inside the changes might be not as visible. But I, as a person from the outside, can see that after the Orange Revolution your country has become different. Even when I meet some Ukrainians abroad I hear them saying ‘my Ukraine.’ This never happened back in the 1990s. Evolution process still continues and I believe that emigrants will return to Ukraine and will bring new ways of thinking.”

For the Ukrainian edition of his new book Time to Die the author wrote a chapter “My Ukraine,” where he described his impressions and thoughts on our country. The film director also wrote that his wife comes from Vinnytsia and that it is another factor for caring about Ukraine.

Zanussi also touched upon the topic of death as the beginning. “Our generation could not afford to run from death because we always felt close to it, while modern culture, especially American culture, defiantly demonstrates its eternity but this cannot be possible. Everything comes to an end in order to give a start for something new,” told the author. Zanussi also believes that tragedies and disasters remind us of our arrogance, but the mankind continues to live by the principle: if there is trouble they turn to God, and when things are fine they enjoy life to the fullest.

The audience was also interested in author’s relationship with time. How does he manage to keep up with everything? To that Zanussi replied with his typical sense of humor: “We all are given approximately the same amount of time for work and about eight hours for sleep. I work a lot because otherwise there is nothing left to do for me.”