Shot on film, Katarína Gramatová’s quietly compassionate feature debut unfolds through the rhythms of everyday life, capturing the beauty of rural Slovakia and the weight of unspoken emotions.
Ahead of the film’s Australian debut, CaSFFA committee member Amelia Leonard spoke to the director.
You began developing Promise, I’ll Be Fine while editing your short documentary, A Good Mind Grows in Thorny Places (CaSFFA, 2024). How did that experience inspire you to return to Slovakia’s ‘Hungry Valleys’ through a fictional lens?
Katarína Gramatová: I actually started filming the boys just to get them used to the camera. I wanted them to reach the point where their expressions or behaviour didn’t change the moment I pressed record. So I was filming everything we did together – barbecues, walks, just hanging around, even sitting in the pub. At some point, I even moved to the village for a while during the scriptwriting, so I could really live with them and capture all these small details of their world. Out of this material came so many lines, gestures and situations that inspired the screenplay. And because I’m an editor, I realised the footage also carried other themes and layers, so I decided to cut a documentary out of it as well. In that sense, the documentary and the fiction grew side by side, feeding into each other.
Aside from Jana Oľhová and Eva Mores, you worked with mostly young, non-professional actors. Can you walk us through the process of shaping that raw energy into performance?
Katarína Gramatová: The boys were like blank pages at the beginning. It wasn’t easy at first – they would sometimes turn away from the camera or get shy. But step by step, I really raised them into actors. I wrote the script directly with them in mind, so the roles would fit them, and some scenes were even created together during the process. With Mišo, who plays the main character, it was a bit different. I had to prepare him for the emotional side of acting. But I chose him exactly because I could see in his eyes that he had already been through things in life, and that gave him depth. Once I explained what a scene was about, he always listened carefully – and from then on, everything came authentically from within him.
The film finds beauty in the mountainous surrounds and everyday rhythms of village life. How did you and your cinematographer, Tomáš Kotas approach crafting the look of the film?
Katarína Gramatová: Tomáš and I agreed from the very beginning that the film had to communicate visually with the audience as much as through the story itself. We wanted the camera to feel like someone quietly observing life in the village from behind a window. Since it was also his debut, he came to the project with a lot of passion, which was really important for me.
The pre-production was very intense. We shot a teaser early on, which helped us understand what was possible. During location scouting we photographed everything, tested angles and lenses, and created a sort of visual presentation where we also added lighting references. We even worked on this remotely – I was in Utekáč and Tomáš was often elsewhere, but it kept us in constant dialogue.
Because it was our first film, we wanted everything to be well prepared and talked through in advance. And that process was not only practical but also inspiring; many new ideas for the script itself came directly from those visual conversations.
You present a refreshingly nuanced portrait of a mother–son relationship, where personal values clash with family loyalty. You seem to extend a level of empathy toward Eňo’s mother, even though her choices are, let’s say, ambiguous. Was it important to avoid casting moral judgement on her?
Katarína Gramatová: For me, it was crucial not to cast judgment on her. She isn’t simply a “bad mother”. She’s a woman navigating very limited options. It’s easy to judge someone from the outside, but people in these regions who long for something more often face obstacles that are hard to overcome. Eňo’s mother also just wants a better life, but the price she pays is a compromise of her own values. I wanted to show her complexity, not reduce her to black and white.
The film’s title, Promise, I’ll Be Fine, carries a sense of both reassurance and denial, as if trying to convince oneself of resilience while quietly acknowledging hardship. Do you think your story ultimately offers optimism when looking at the realities of young people, or, a more sober reflection on the limits of their future?
Katarína Gramatová: The film shows that at a young age, we often have a very strong inner compass of what is right and what is wrong – and it’s important to follow it, even if it means coming into conflict with your own family. It is not good to support lies and close your eyes to them. The title Promise, I’ll Be Fine comes from a line where his mother says: “if you want to have a good life, you need me.” But he decides to go his own way, to stand up for himself. The ‘promise’ in the title is not only to others, but mainly to himself – that he will be fine, even without following her way.
Promise, I’ll Be Fine screens on Friday, Oct 10th, 7.00pm at Classic Cinemas, Elsternwick.