The Healing Effects of Self-Praise

Renowned writer Abel Znorko, a Nobel Prize laureate in literature, lives in voluntary isolation - far from people, in his luxurious cabin deep in the forest. The reason? Love. Or rather: escape from it.

One day, Nicolas Gobert appears at his door - a journalist from an obscure regional newspaper who has traveled all the way from France. He wants to discuss Znorko's latest novel, Denied Love - a book composed of intimate love letters addressed to a mysterious woman with the initials H. M. What begins as an interview soon transforms into a psychological duel between two men with completely different views on life, relationships, sexuality, and the nature of love. Yet both are bound by an unspoken secret - one knows it, the other has no idea.

With each new question, it becomes clearer that Gobert did not come for journalistic work. Truths surface that shatter the carefully constructed identities of both men into fragments of half-truths, self-deceptions, and assumptions. Their confrontation leads them to the threshold of thoughts about being and non-being - to discoveries they will have to live with from that moment on.