It’s fair to say we didn’t know what to expect with Hania. After the Something Worth Doing documentary shoot it was suggested that she could be a subject of a portrait if we so wished. How could we knock back an opportunity like that after hearing what she had to say in the interview? To put it simply, we couldn’t.

It was important from the beginning to establish a particular path for the portrait and keep to it. However, it wasn’t particularly easy to do so with Hania. With so much to say and offer to the world, it was very difficult to contain her. We were shown through a photographic history of her and her family’s life on our first visit but in a way such that she would go on a tangent then eventually come back to what she was originally trying to say. We didn’t see her for a number of weeks after that initial shoot because of a severe back injury she sustained. As she noted: her mind was willing but her body was unable. But being the person that she is, Hania mustered the courage to get herself out of bed for one final day of filming. We decided to utilise Sandra’s fantastic drawing skills to quite literally complete a portrait of her: a portrait of her life because all of her life experiences have made her who she is now. So with that in mind we decided not to show Hania’s complete face at all until the very end of the documentary. While the drawing was being completed Hania truly opened up about her life and the people within it. She told stories with such honesty and detail that we were completely engrossed.

There was the potential difficulty of the audience being unable to understand what Hania was saying with her European accent. During the portrait she tells an important story that her father had passed onto her and her three brothers about how to approach life when things aren’t going well. With each word as poignant as the next we felt it was vital for the audience to know exactly what was being said. So we put together text on the screen as she spoke, in different places but in synchronisation with her voice to emphasise the importance. The title itself is in response to a photo she showed us taken in 1945. It shows her sitting in the sun with her friends and the hyacinth flower is a representation of the first time she felt alive again after the atrocities of the Second World War. The flower itself is used as a metaphor for life and death during the portrait.

 We established such a great bond with Hania and hope that our portrait illustrates what a great person she is.
- Lachlan, Sandra and Hendrik