Reviving the traces, yellowed by time, of a life carefully filed away in archives; giving body to one of 20th century Poland’s most beautiful poetic voices; building a memorial and a vibrant tribute in the most rigorous and masterful documentary tradition… These are the promises kept by Not all of me will die. Zuzanna Ginczanka was shot in 1944, at the age of 27, just as she was gaining recognition in Polish literary circles. Joanna Grudzinska starts out from this tragic death to connect shots of today’s Poland to the story of a life whose dazzling path takes us backwards to Nazi barbarism, then to the intellectual profusion of the 1930s, the tale of a war foretold – there’s too much coming: either love or war – and then to the adolescent, rebellious and preoccupied by the first stirrings of the body of a woman. Joanna Grudzinska’s striking modus operandi is to inverse the course of events. She goes back in time, from death to life, through the knowledgeable eyes of researchers and experts. The interviews, moving and scientific, are echoed by tight framing on the faint handwriting in diaries and the outdated fonts of the press cuttings of the period. The breath of her poetry influences the documentary material, seeping into the gardens of Lviv and the streets of Warsaw, mingling with the rustle of nature. Not all of me will die is a film haunted by the revolted and sensual words of “The Star of Zion”, whose vitality and modernity are loud and clear. Teenagers read the poems aloud here and there; women chant their rights in protests. As an ode to freedom, this vitalist, feminist film Not all of me will die, whose title refers to the 1942 poem known as Non Omnis Moriar, looks at modern-day Poland that, far from praising the gesture, has chosen to censor it.
(Claire Lasolle) Joanna Grudzinska