Zulawski had already reviewed a few hundred actresses for the leading role until he picked up 18-year old Iwona Petry whom he accidentally met in a caf? Petry was a sociology student in Warsaw and didn't have any previous acting experience. Zulawski invited from France Harmel Sbraire, a specialist who helps actors to relax and to increase their self-confidence. Sbraire, who previously also worked with Juliette Binoche, gave Petry an intensive training course that included the elements of tai chi, dancing and meditation. When the movie was completed, Petry suddenly disappeared and the press accused Zulawski of mistreating the actress and leading her to a mental breakdown. When the actress reappeared, in her interview to the magazine Tw骿 styl she said: "Upon the end of the shooting I was completely lost, my peace and self-confidence were affected. But now I'm already calm and more open toward life. I'm richer now."

"I've chosen Boguslaw Linda because the producers and I love stars," Zulawski said in his 1995 interview to the Warsaw newspaper Gazeta Stoleczna. However, Linda, then Poland's number one star, and the director didn't get along on the set. They even exchanged caustic remarks about one another in the Polish press. The common goal finally prevailed, and upon the end of the shooting Zulawski called Linda a "charismatic actor."

"Zulawski was eager to make a film which touched themes beyond the pale in contemporary cinema, namely irrationalism, necrophilia and mysticism. Linda's character starts the film like a typical modern European. He's the bourgeois everyman, an academic, sceptical about life and out of touch with his spiritual side. But his research into shaman and his erotcally charged affair with the Italian woman shake him out of his certainties. Not that film breaks all the rules. On one level, it's simple, if very intense, love story; a drama about how romantic obsession is both benign and potentially very destructive. "The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact," Shakespeare wrote in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Zulawski's lyrical, morbid tale suggests that sentiment still has some currency." - Geoffrey Macnab, Filmfestivals.com

"The Polish-language pic may please rebellious youth at home and the voyeur crowd abroad, but few others will sit through this overlong study of straining faces, quivering limbs and random violence, whose larger message somehow gets lost as the number of sex scenes reaches double digits. Look for the technically proficient "Chamanka" in alternative vid bins, and on latenight highbrow Euro cable." - Stephen O'Shea, Variety

"In "Chamanka," Zulawski clearly wished to explore themes beyond the boundaries of conventional cinema, themes such as necrophilia and mysticism. In keeping with his desire to stretch the limits of aesthetic expression, his film fulfill neither classical requirement of delighting or instructing. If anything, it is intended to confound both reason and sense. Seoul moviegoers expecting to be entertained or enlightened may be in for a disappointment. This film is acclaimed for its intellectual and aesthetic merits. You can imagine my surprise therefore when I discovered it was playing at the Seoul Theater." - Timothy Watson, Korea Times