The Healing Effects of Self-Praise

Renowned writer Abel Znorko, a Nobel Prize laureate in literature, lives in voluntary seclusion - far from people, in his luxurious cabin in the heart of nature. His reason is love: to escape from it, to deny its power. He enjoys solitude, yet drowns in it at the same time.

One day, Nicolas Gobert arrives - a journalist from a minor 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 seems like an ordinary interview soon transforms into a psychological duel between two men with completely different views on life, relationships, sexuality, and the nature of love. Yet they share one 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 identity of both men into fragments of half-truths, self-deceptions, and assumptions. Their confrontation escalates to shocking revelations - and to questions about being and non-being that they must live with from that moment on.