HER WILL BE DONE
HER WILL BE DONE
Performance
In this, her second feature film, a family portrait, Polish-born French director Julia Kowalski interweaves precise observation with fantasy, realism with the supernatural, and hard physical labour with mythical tales. Nawojka wants to leave her loving yet controlling father and her mean brothers and start a life of her own, 50 kilometres away, where no one can make things difficult for her any more. But then a peculiar stranger appears in the neighbourhood, Nawojka is haunted by bloody visions, and an illness breaks out in the cowshed. Kowalski blends realistic 16mm observations with folkloric fantasy motifs to create an extreme metaphor of provincial life. More than thirty years after Krzysztof Kieślowski's Karol in Paris, Nawojka watches things fall apart in the French countryside. Only this time, her path doesn't lead back to a "home" that never was, but instead to an inner-exile inhabited by visions of horror.
Text: Bernd Buder
Wed 05.11. I 19:30 I GLAD-HOUSE I original version with English subtitles + simultaneous German translation
Julia Kowalski
Simon Beaufils
Anna Le Mouël
Daniel Kowalski
Maria Wróbel, Roxane Mesquida, Jean-Baptiste Durand, Raphaël Thiéry
Julia Kowalski - Born in France to Polish parents, Julia digs into her country of origin through themes that haunt her: the working-class life, teenagehood, family, sexuality and faith.
Her first feature film, RAGING ROSE was presented in Cannes in 2016 as part of the ACID selection. Her last medium-length film, I SAW THE FACE OF THE DEVIL premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 2023 and went on to win the Jean Vigo Award, the France Télévisions Grand Prize at Clermont-Ferrand and the CINÉ+ Award at Brive. A hybrid of fiction and documentary, the film tells the unhinged story of a young Polish girl spiraling through a crisis of faith. This film laid the groundwork for HER WILL BE DONE, and revealed the blazing force of Maria Wróbel.
In 2024, Julia was awarded the CNC’s Filmmaker’s Career Path grant for her next project set in Poland.
2023 - I SAW THE FACE OF THE DEVIL (J’AI VU LE VISAGE DU DIABLE), short, fiction
2013 - MUSIQUE DE CHAMBRE, short, fiction
2010 - ANTON, DANS L’OMBRE, short, documentary
2007 - ART FACTOTUM, short, experimental documentary
2006 - BIENVENUE CHEZ MACIEK, short, documentary
2004 - MIEDZYLESIE, AU MILIEU DES BOIS, short, documentary
