Crime, history and the making of Operation Hyacinth: An interview with Marcin Ciastoń

Piotr Domalewski’s Operation Hyacinth (2021) centres on the young police officer Robert’s (Tomasz Ziętek) investigations into a case of serial murder and his developing romance with the student Arek (Hubert Miłkowski). The connective tissue is that all of the victims are gay men and Arek plays a role in it. As the film unfolds, we learn, alongside Robert, that the case is a massive cover-up operation and that his discoveries marry together his private and his professional lives. In this interview, I discuss, with writer Marcin Ciastoń, his extensive research for the film, which was inspired by historical events; and Robert’s and Arek’s romance. We explore how, if on the one hand, Arek represents rebellion to Robert, then, on the other, Robert is the embodiment of reticence, and we attend to a key scene wherein Robert is pressured by his father (Marek Kalita), also a police officer, into questioning Arek about his sexual history. All of the characters appear to be on trial, and as Ciastoń declares, ‘[e]veryone involved had a secret’. This interview advances scholarship by recovering the critical project that directly informs this imaginative one, by suggesting its importance in LGBTQ history and by attending to Ciastoń’s approach to personal and public histories.