Fugue is a coproduction of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Sweden. The lead producer is Agnieszka Kurzydło from the Polish outfit MD4, with Karla Stojáková, from the Czech firm Axman Production, and Jonas Kellagher, from Swedish CommonGround Pictures, acting as coproducers.

“I first came into contact with the project in March 2015, when I read a rough script and immediately fell in love,” says Czech coproducer Karla Stojáková. “I met producer Agnieszka Kurzydło thanks to the Czech producer Viktor Tauš. They had worked together previously on the coproductions The Red Spider and Red Captain, then later also on the trilogy Garden Store, directed by Jan Hřebejk.”

Fugue tells the story of a woman’s impossible return to family life, infusing the psychological thriller with fantasy. With brilliant directing and powerful acting, the film conveys the insanity-driven anguish that upsets the family balance.

“Fugue is a ‘feminine film’ in the true sense of the word. I was excited not only by the script and the approach of Kurzydlo as producer, but also by Agnieszka Smoczyńska, who is a very talented director. It has been great fun from the very start all the way up to the delightful news that the film was chosen for Semaine de la Critique—the culmination of the challenging journey undertaken by this film,” said Stojáková. 

In her director’s note, Smoczyńska says: “Fugue is about the social taboo concerning motherhood and the fact that women are socially pressured to accept this role without hesitation. What if that weren’t always the case? What if a woman could forget giving birth, having a child? Would she choose to do it again?”

Fugue’s main character is Alicjia, who has rebuilt a free-spirited way of life in the wake of a memory loss. After two years, she returns to her former family, against her will, to assume her role as wife, mother, and daughter. Although she looks familiar, she acts like a stranger to her estranged husband and son. Feelings of alienation, love, and revelations rekindle her interior flame.

The star of Fugue is Gabriela Muskała of Poland, who also wrote the script, which Smoczyńska says is inspired by a true story: “A few years back, Gabriela and I saw a TV program about a woman who couldn’t remember her name or where she was from—nothing. During the broadcast, a man called in to the studio, claiming that he was her father. She didn’t recognize the man’s voice. She didn’t even remember she had a family. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to meet them. So we decided to visit this woman and find out how and why her old self and her old life had been erased from her memory. How did it happen that one day she left home and vanished for months? How come nobody looked for her? How could she have forgotten her own child? How was she able to go back to her former life after such a traumatic experience? How did she come to terms with the fact that she had been somebody else and that one day her love for her husband and son just vanished and she became a totally new person?” These were the questions the director and the writer were looking to find answers to.

Smoczyńska continues: “We learned that the woman was suffering from dissociative fugue disorder, a rare psychiatric condition that can manifest itself in unplanned travel, leaving the family home, partial memory loss, and change of personality. In a single moment, a life becomes a blank slate again.” Together with Muskała, the director explains, she took this condition as the starting point for the character of Alicja.

The film was supported with €100,000 from the Czech Film Fund, and was partly filmed in the Czech Republic (with Czech music composer Filip Míšek and Czech VFX supervisor Michal Křeček from Magiclab, where all of the film’s postpro- duction is took place).

“Fugue presents the remarkable story of a woman who suffers from memory loss and is reunited with her original family. The confrontation between her past and current selves, however, results in complications for all the protagonists. The film has the potential of a distinctive psychological drama, and at the same time, there is humor, insight, and empathy for the characters. Generally speaking, the story deals with the roles that we hold in our ‘environments’ and the fragility of our existence,” said the Czech Film Fund Council, explaining their decision to support the project.

The film also received support from the Polish Film Institute, Eurimages, Odra-Film (PL), the Mazovia Warsaw Film Commission (Pl), the Lower Silesia Film Fund (PL), the funds of the City of Wrocław and the Lower Silesia Region (PL), Magiclab (Cz), and Film i Väst (SE). International sales are handled by Alpha Violet.

AGNIESZKA SMOCZYŃSKA

(b. 1978) is a graduate of the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School in Katowice in Poland and has also taken master classes at the wajda Film School. She is recipient of a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage for outstanding artistic achievement, the My Talent for Poland prize, and the Golden Pen, awarded by the president of Poland. In 2015 her first feature film, The Lure, experimenting with the genres of musical and horror, won the Best Debut award at the Polish Film Festival in Gdynia, and she was named Discovery of the Year at the Polish Film Awards. The Lure has received numerous awards at festivals worldwide, including Fantasporto, Sofia, Montreal, Vilnius, and Sundance, where she won the Special Jury Prize for “unique vision and design.” In 2017, Smoczyńska was invited by the Sydney Film Festival, Variety, and European Film Promotion to take part in the “European Cinema: Ten women Filmmakers to watch” program. She was recipient of a Global Filmmaking Award at Sundance in 2017.