Female Film Critics 24/375
Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s slyly pretty fable in which an interloper’s healing frees members of a miserable community from their various repressions and discontents, is slyly funny–no belly laughs, just an accumulation of weird and unexpected digressions that offset the film’s pervasive atmosphere of isolation, loneliness and slow suffocation by social conventions.
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Few films have pictured the Social Media phenomenon as empathically as Sweat. Thanks to a powerhouse performance by Magdalena Koleśnik, Sweatallows for a very nuanced and kind look at a profession that has been demonized and mocked. Watching movies about people staring at their phones is usually about as stimulating as watching grass grow. This is not the case here. Koleśnik’s energy is contagious.
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Decked out in bright bubblegum pink, her blonde ponytail bouncing as energetically as her lithe legs and toned arms, Sylwia (Magdalena Kolesnik) shimmers in the spotlight, radiating energy to and affection for the legions of Insta fans she calls “my loves.” But it’s when Sweat looks beneath the shiny-happy sheen of Sylwia’s Instagram-programmed existence that things get interesting.
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Corpus Christi explores questions of faith, repentance and redemption, establishing a moral ambiguity that creates undeniable dramatic tension. In this Oscar-nominated film, Polish director Jan Komasa and screenwriter Mateusz Pacewicz ably contrast the protagonist’s two worlds — violent detention center vs. deceptively placid town — and, by extension, the duality of soulful-eyed character.
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Oppressive political policies often come most alive when embedded in strong personal stories. That’s the case in writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War. In 1949 Poland, three workers travel the countryside in a van collecting folk music on audiotape all in honor of the nation. A favored few singers and dancers will be chosen to represent their People’s culture.
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A tenacious Polish teen who’s had to grow up too soon takes center stage in Anna Zamecka’s powerful documentary Communion. The film invests viewers deeply in Ola as she works every angle she can think of to bring her family back together, even though the odds seem stacked against her.
Communion, a Polish documentary that feels like one of those gritty kitchen-sink British dramas from the early ‘60s, does a compelling job of depicting the emotional damage done when adults lack the maturity to take responsibility for their actions.
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Communion is an intimate, immersive documentary that Zamecka has shot and structured like a feature. It opens right in the middle of a small moment — a boy struggling to put on his belt — and we’re pulled immediately into the family dynamics.
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Filmmaker Anna Zamecka makes an impressive directorial debut with this story about 14-year-old Ola Kaczanowski and her family. The documentary uses an unobtrusive fly-on-the-wall approach without narration, as we watch as Ola handling all the household chores.
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