Michał Toczek on his film Spiritus Sanctus

‘Klaps’ Newspaper Published on 23.09.2026

„Spiritus Sanctus”, reż. Michał Toczek

I realise that talking about the process of coming up with the idea for and writing a 15-minute film might seem a bit silly. And yet, it’s a topic worth exploring. In my view, the most important part happens just before stepping onto the set, on a sheet of paper. In this case, there were five sheets.

The director and screenwriter Adam Porębowicz (Macocha, Szczerość) came to me with the idea for Spiritus Sanctus. The film’s concept had it all – an absurd situation, a protagonist, and an unconventional perspective. Adam proposed three storylines: the story of Bogdan, who goes out to get a bottle of vodka during the Pope’s ban on alcohol; the story of a certain wand-wielder; and a scene set in a television studio.

During our initial informal discussions, we realised that Bogdan’s story contained all the most interesting elements and that three stories would be too long for a short film. I won’t even mention the production side of things – filming three historical storylines seemed an almost impossible task given the constraints of our budget. Looking back, I think we made the right decision. We ended up with a proper ‘short’.

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Kiedy już mieliśmy pomysł i zarysowaną dramaturgię, zaczęliśmy myśleć o szczegółach. Po co bohaterowi wódka? Czy jest alkoholikiem, czy ma inny powód? Jeśli tak, to jaki? Czy to właśnie ten powód będzie go definiował jako bohatera? Faktem jest, że alkohol stanowił naturalny element panoramy potransformacyjnego świata. Z jednej strony film musi mieć pazur, ale z drugiej chcieliśmy, żeby była to narracja wpisująca się w dzisiejsze sposoby mówienia i myślenia o alkoholu. W końcu pojawił się pomysł na centralne wydarzenie filmu (bez spoilerów!), a to narzuciło pytanie: jak my, jako scenarzysta i reżyser, się do tego ustosunkujemy? Jaka jest nasza odpowiedź na papieską „świętość”?

Z jednej strony nie chcieliśmy zrobić filmu zakrawającego na cynizm, z drugiej – do postaci papieża mamy sporo dystansu. Chcieliśmy zachować „miniaturowość” tej historii, a przy tym nie chcieliśmy robić filmu, w którym alkoholik odmienia swoje życie przez „papieskie dotknięcie”.

W dyskusję zaangażowało się więcej osób. Potrzeba było z prostoty i złożoności, skrystalizowanej myśli i czegoś niezbyt oczywistego w odbiorze. Puenta filmu w formie odautorskiego „nie wiem” mogła okazać się zbyt mało wyrazista. Istniało ryzyko, że dramaturgicznie film będzie niedomknięty.

Once we had the idea and the basic plot outline, we started thinking about the details. Why does the protagonist need vodka? Is he an alcoholic, or is there another reason? If so, what is it? Will it be this very reason that defines him as a protagonist? The fact is that alcohol was a natural part of the post-transformation world. On the one hand, the film needs to pack a punch, but on the other, we wanted the narrative to reflect today’s ways of talking about and thinking about alcohol. Eventually, an idea for the film’s central event emerged (no spoilers!), and this raised the question: how will we, as screenwriter and director, respond to this? What is our response to papal ‘holiness’?

On the one hand, we didn’t want to make a film that bordered on cynicism; on the other, we maintain a fair bit of distance from the figure of the Pope. We wanted to preserve the ‘intimate scale’ of this story, whilst at the same time avoiding making a film in which an alcoholic turns his life around through a ‘papal touch’.

More people became involved in the discussion. What was needed was a balance of simplicity and complexity, a crystallised idea and something that wasn’t entirely obvious to the viewer. The film’s punchline, in the form of the director’s own ‘I don’t know’, might have proved too vague. There was a risk that, in dramatic terms, the film would feel unresolved..

In the end, we reached the conclusion of our deliberations and discussions. Adam wrote the final script. Did we manage to reach the shore? You can judge for yourselves. Everything that came afterwards (casting, production, post-production) was no longer such a challenge. Of course, this ‘intellectual’ process continued at every subsequent stage, but I feel that the biggest dilemmas were resolved precisely during our discussions about the very concept of the film. That is why I agree with the view of one of my lecturers, who used to say: ‘Films are made on paper; after that, it’s just a matter of execution.’