Ever wondered if your therapist should be getting a co-writing credit on your love life? Or if you could pay your rent with the ‘currency’ of your own tears?

Welcome to the world of Łukasz Ronduda, the Polish filmmaker and art curator who’s making us look at our ’emotional baggage’ as if it were a high-priced installation at the MoMA. His latest film, Tell Me What You Feel, recently hit the 55th Rotterdam International Film Festival, and it’s basically a mirror for anyone who’s ever tried to “neuroplastically” fix their childhood while simultaneously trying to swipe right.

In this exclusive chat with Anuradha Kodagoda, Łukasz Ronduda — the man behind hits like All Our Fears and Rave — dives into the “Tear Dealer” economy, why Gen Z is the new Punk, and how he turned a viral video of a screaming man in a paddy field into his cinematic ultimate guidance.

Whether you’re a ‘Freudian-Marxist’ or just someone who wonders why your partner brings their mommy issues into the bedroom, this interview is for you.

AK: I was speechless after watching your film because it mirrored my own journey of overcoming childhood trauma through art and therapy. How do you explain the fact that these deeply personal experiences are so homogeneous and resonant across different lives in different continents?

ŁR: The film is about the commodification of emotions in a new generation — Gen Z — who are permanently immersed in therapy discourse. For my 22-year-old actor’s character, this language was embraced at a defining moment of youth. Just as the punk movement was the subculture of my generation, therapy has become theirs.

They believe this language can resolve deep social and economic conflicts. We had a dialogue in the film — which was eventually removed — where the main character, Maria, says that for the underprivileged, the dominant emotion is shame. For the privileged, it is anxiety — the fear of losing status. For Maria, social promotion was simply a movement from shame to anxiety. In the ‘therapy bubble’ you work on both in the same way, but the film shows that you cannot truly resolve brutal, structural inequalities with this internal thinking alone.

You asked if today’s mental health crisis is a byproduct of a self-centered culture. My film is actually about the relation. It’s about two people who fall in love and create an “impossible” bridge between conflicted social spheres.

At the starting point, the film shows the possibility of going out of yourself to embrace another human being. That is the stake: observing whether this bond is possible. You have your internal battles, yes, but you are trying to create a healthy relationship. The film lives in that ambiguity — the idea that to create a satisfying external relation, you must first heal your internal wounds. It is quite simple, really; the film is deeply Freudian and Marxist.

AK: The ‘Tear Dealer’ is a fascinating concept. It suggests that the market economy now allows us to trade our traumas, implying that art is no longer ‘innocent’ but rather a tool for commodifying pain. Can you elaborate on how this idea was conceived?

ŁR:  I am fascinated by how this younger generation falls in love while remaining hyper-conscious of their own psychological mechanisms. They immediately ask, “Why am I loving you?” and link it to an avoidant attachment style or an emotionally absent mother. They bring the “parental context” into the room instantly.

In the film, Maria and Patrick fall in love, but the very first thing they do is trade stories of family trauma to ‘check’ if the relationship even has a chance. This ambiguity is what I find so compelling: the coexistence of true, raw emotion alongside a specific, clinical distance used to analyze that feeling.

In this culture, parents are permanently present as figures in your internal life. You are told you must “neuroplastically” transform your relationship with your mother just to have a healthy bond with your partner.

This is why, in my film, the parents don’t have names. They are simply Maria’s Father or Patrick’s Mother. They aren’t just characters; they are archetypes, internal figures that the protagonists must confront through a therapeutic process to become ‘healthy’.

AK: There is a striking scene where Patrick runs through a paddy field, screaming into a phone camera about his desire to be loved, to be sensitive, and to be an artist. To me, this captures a ‘manic’ quality of Gen Z having unlimited platforms for expression yet never feeling ‘heard’ or ‘enough’. This is how I understood this situation, what was on your mind when you developed this?

ŁR: I actually found the inspiration for this scene and the character of Patrick on the internet. It was a video of a young Gen Z man, Patrick Ruzycki, and I was absolutely fascinated by it. In the video, he is running, filming himself, and screaming. He doesn’t care if he looks awkward  or strange; he is being radically honest and connected to his deepest truth. It was incredibly moving.

For me, that video became the essence of the entire movie. During pre-production, I showed it to everyone as a North Star, telling them: “Look, this is what the character will be like. This is what the film will look like.” It captured that rare moment where the performance of the self and the raw internal truth finally collide.

AK:  What is memory, or even trauma, if not just how we record and decode an incident? Like the girl in your film who believes she can turn off distant lights by clapping, we often connect random events to create our own ‘truths’. Do you believe our reality is defined entirely by these subjective perceptions?

ŁR: Our main goal for healthy development is simply to connect — to create social bonds and become part of a larger structure. I love the way these young people communicate. They provide a very tender model of communication based on curiosity, fascination, and deep respect for the other human being. They are focused on their own emotions, but also on decoding the emotions and resources of the person in front of them. This is a very good start for communication, and I believe it represents a potentially huge social change brought by this generation.

The film comes out of this fascination with radical honesty and shamelessness. This generation is fighting shame, that specific emotion that appears on the border between you and others. Shame happens when you feel you don’t fit in, or that you aren’t ‘sufficient’ enough to be part of the community. Their fight to be shameless can be truly healing for society.

AK: Your work resonates with a society where Gen Z is hyper-focused on ‘fine-tuning’ their traumas to become their best selves, which is the latest trend fueled by social media. How long was the project’s duration from development to delivery, and what did your research process entail?

ŁR: I have the unique privilege of working as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art. In my daily work, I observe emerging trends and collaborate with young artists. Because artists often detect shifts in social emotions long before the rest of society, I have early access to these insights. It took four years to move from the initial idea to where we are now — which for the film industry isn’t actually that long — but the discussion has only become more relevant with time. Being rooted in the art world has deeply informed my filmmaking. This is my fourth film, and my work consistently focuses on finding characters who embody the actual moment.