I Feel Free on Stage. An Interview with Magdalena Czerwińska

From the moment I began to feel comfortable with myself and found a sense of inner peace, I also started coming back to Toruń more often – says the laureate of the Pola Negri Film Award of the Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region.

Were your secondary school years in Toruń a good time for your artistic development?

I think it all begins within. Someone who truly wants to develop will always find a way. But if there are also places that support this development, such as a Youth Cultural Centre or a Music School, or a person who becomes an authority figure at school, as well as conversations at home, and if that sensitivity which is only just beginning to grow is not crushed, then I think that little shoot will find its way and continue to grow.

I had a very wide range of opportunities because I was developing through sport and at the Music School at the same time, but theatre was what captivated me the most. The Youth Cultural Centre was a wonderful place for development: there was contemporary dance, folk dance, graphic arts and theatre classes. I still have a great fondness for places like that because I know how much educational work goes into them.

At first, at the Youth Cultural Centre I attended STS, or Spięty Teatr Spinaczy, run by Grażyna Podlaszewska, and later I moved to Studio P., which is still successfully run today by Lucyna Sowińska. By secondary school, I had become more focused on poetry. It was a period of inner transformation and searching for myself, and I felt a strong need to move towards poetry and sung poetry. Studio P. gave me that opportunity. It was also there, under Ms Lucyna’s guidance, that I prepared for the entrance exams to the Theatre Academy in Kraków.

The Music School was more like a training ground where discipline was fundamental. In the end, I think all of these experiences came together well and gave me solid tools to start with, although it was extremely difficult to combine everything. Today I sometimes wonder how I managed it all.

Do you remember the moment when you chose acting?

Yes, I think I knew fairly early on, although sport remained important to me for a long time. I was part of a fairly successful basketball team at Primary School No. 24. We had some significant achievements, and I trained a lot and even went away to sports camps. I really enjoyed it, and I believe sport still helps me very often today. Especially when things are difficult, I know that at some point you simply have to get up, dust yourself off and try again.

Sport also teaches teamwork, which later proved useful in theatre. At the Music School, on the other hand, I realised that the stress I experienced before performing was not the kind of stress that motivates you. I was “hiding behind the instrument”. What mattered there was technique, and I did not have enough time to work on it because I was involved in other things as well.

On the theatre stage, however, stress did not overwhelm me. Quite the opposite – I felt freer. So I quickly understood where I was able to give more of myself and, at the same time, receive more in return.

In 2009, you received the Flisak Award at Tofifest, and now you have received the Marshal’s Film Award. How has the world of cinema changed over those 17 years, and how have you changed?

It is connected with the development of my own awareness. Back then, I was a young mother, and it was very important to me to be at home with this little person and devote all my time and attention to him. Now I have more space and more tools, and I am more aware of what I want to do.

I am not going to say anything particularly groundbreaking. We are simply still fighting for balance in the film world, so that cinema is not only male-dominated cinema – although I myself have acted in a great deal of it.

For example, today at the Tofifest festival I watched Zuzanna Grabowska’s film “The Road Less Travelled”, co-written by and starring, alongside Zuza, my theatre colleague Agata Wątróbska. I have great respect for the women for taking matters into their own hands. It requires an enormous amount of work, but it can be done.

I also believe that today you need to be aware of what you are taking part in. And have I changed? As a person, I change every day.

You appear in many productions and television series. In recent years, streaming platforms have become increasingly prominent. How do you see their role in the world of film?

On the one hand, there are genuinely more productions, which means more work, but they are also somewhat undermining traditional cinema. The world is changing – cinemas gave way to television, television channels to streaming platforms. I do not have a television at home myself and I use streaming platforms.

At the same time, I would happily go to an outdoor cinema screening of a classic film, watch a black-and-white movie under the open sky and revisit films by Wajda or Kawalerowicz.

It is a bit like going into a bookshop – there are so many books, and you have to choose the right one. Streaming platforms offer many opportunities because they produce miniseries. There is room for more content than can fit into a feature film, and we can delve more deeply into a character’s story and world.

For actors, that is wonderful because you can tell a story over eight episodes. The scripts are often very well written. The characters differ from those in daily television series. They are not one-dimensional, and a great deal happens beneath the surface of the dialogue.

Film is different again, because there is much less dialogue, and the point is to convey the meaning within a specific scene. On the other hand, there are films I do not even start watching because I do not want to waste my time.

You need to know how to use all of this, because we cannot escape it. These are the realities of the market. Streaming gives us variety, and I decide what I choose, just as every viewer does.

Finally, let us return to Toruń. Do you come back to it, even if only in your memories?

I do come back because my parents and my dog are here. When you leave to pursue your dream studies, you are launched into the world like a stone from a slingshot. You do not really realise what you are leaving behind because you are so eager to leap straight into your dreams.

I remember an important moment when I realised that I was no longer chasing something elusive. From the moment I began to feel comfortable with myself and found a sense of inner peace, I immediately started wanting to come back to Toruń more and more often.

Whenever I visit my parents, there is no chance that I will not take the dog for a walk through the Old Town and down to the Vistula. We do a circuit similar to the one I used to walk when I attended the Music School and the Youth Cultural Centre – through Rapacki Square and past the Centre of Contemporary Art.

These walks are important to me. I am different now, and Toruń is different too, but for me they are still the same paths.

I think I will continue coming back here for as long as I can. When I received the Film Award of the Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region at the Tofifest festival, I had this thought that I am deeply grateful to be appreciated precisely here, where everything began, by my own region. It is very moving for me.

Paweł Jankowski and Dariusz Czołgowski
Promotion Department

10 September 2026