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"I feel this pull to the other side." Memento International has unveiled an early promo trailer for the Polish film called Woman of..., originally known as Kobieta z... in Polish (which is also a direct translation to Woman Of). The film initially premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival a few weeks ago, playing in the Main Competition. It was one of my favorite films of the festival, and I wrote a positive review of it to bring some extra attention to it. The film tells the entire life story of a trans woman named Aniela, starting from her young life as a boy growing up in Poland during their transition away from communist rule, through her own coming out and eventual life as a woman. Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik stars as Aniela, with a cast including Joanna Kulig (seen in Cold War), Bogumila Bajor, and Mateusz Wieclawek. This is a rather odd...

With her enigmatically titled Woman Of… (Kobieta z..), Malgorzata Szumowska returns from the magical satire of Never Gonna Snow Again to trenchant social realism, recounting a journey lasting half a lifetime, of sacrifice, sorrow and resilience.

Written and directed in collaboration with regular cinematographer and creative partner Michal Englert, this is a rare close-up of an older trans woman making tough choices in a majority Catholic country that remains legislatively and socially hostile. The film’s compassionate gaze and stirring performances make it an illuminating window into gender recognition in an unaccommodating environment.

Like many dramas focused on a highly specific community and developed out of extensive interviews, Woman Of… doesn’t entirely escape the feel of a representational project that ticks all the required boxes in a not entirely seamless narrative. However, that doesn’t make it any less sincere or moving, not only in the principal character’s...

The first real clue comes when Andrzej is called up for national service and, standing in front of the army medics in his underwear, refuses to take his socks off. His toenails were painted blue, he tells his mates cheerfully a couple of years later, as if it were a joke. But it isn’t a joke; it is the most serious thing in his life. He is waving a flag at the time; they are in the bloom of the Solidarity movement and the promise of a new world, when it feels like anything goes.

But it isn’t quite like that, either. Poland will soon find its conservative heart. An occasional magazine article about newly recognized gender dysphoria may pop up. The internet is full of sex sites offering new combinations, even if that doesn’t quite chime with what Andrzej, who has a beloved wife and children,...

Trans women are women, deserving of all the respect and rights of their cis counterparts. That reality is conveyed poignantly in “Woman Of,” from Polish directors Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert, a sprawling, lyrical, and sensitive journey of a woman becoming her true self.

While it occasionally bags at the seams, spending time meandering down inconsequential tangents bereft of purpose, the film’s characters are acted with such nuanced specificity that even at two hours and 20 minutes, “Woman Of” is a never-tiring portrait of gender and sexuality told across 45 years of Poland. We begin in the 1970s and move through communism, independence, and Covid, but society still largely languishes in the bureaucratic hell that awaits Polish LGBTQ+ people seeking lives without discrimination, to marry who they please, or to be legally recognized for their gender.

Aniela Wesoly, or Andrej as her parents named her, has spent her whole life in...

There will come a time, perhaps not even too far from now, when films like “Woman Of…” may feel, if not old hat, at least familiar, part of a genre unto itself: not a coming-of-age story but a coming-of-self one, tracing the particular life stages of identifying oneself as transgender, accepting oneself as such, and finally living that truth out loud. Spanning decades in its closeup portrait of a Polish trans woman traveling that trajectory in a social climate hostile to her very existence, Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert’s heart-on-sleeve film isn’t aiming to be revolutionary — there’s an old-fashioned melodramatic heft to its episodic construction, setting its heroine’s tale in a pointedly mainstream context. But it still represents a bold gesture of cinematic allyship, drawing attention as it does to Poland’s dire record on LGBT rights.

Those merits will serve this Venice competition premiere well on the festival circuit,...

Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s transgender drama Women Of world premieres in Competition at the Venice Film Festival on Friday.

As ever the filmmaking team – who have been working together for more than two decades on titles such as Mug, In The Name Of and French-language drama Elles – are pushing boundaries in their native Poland.

Set against the backdrop of the country’s transition from communism to capitalism, Woman Of follows protagonist Aniela Wesoły across the course of 45 years as she seeks to live freely as a trans woman in a small provincial town.

The film charts Wesoly’s journey with her wife, as the couple navigate her transition in an environment where it is neither recognized nor accepted.

“We’ve been thinking about this for a long time. The first impulse was 20 years ago when Michal [who is also a cinematographer] filmed one of the first [transition] surgeries,” says Szumowska.

“But there...

A raw punk-spirited energy fuels Olga Chajdas’ second feature which, even more than her first, Nina, concerns itself with a woman fully embracing herself as an adult within the world. Lena Góra both co-wrote the screenplay with Chajdas and stars as Ela - a character based loosely on Góra’s own mother. The youngest daughter of a large family, Ela is prone to mental health episodes that - in the late Eighties Poland when this is set - see her institutionalised in a hospital where the residents sport labels on their backs identifying them with unpleasant epithets including “glutton”, “retard” and “lunatic”.

Chajdas puts us into Ela’s headspace near the start as we see the camera rotate slightly, as if affected by Ela’s mental state. In the hospital, she calls her boyfriend Tomek (Mateusz Wieclawek) and soon leaving with him. This is just the start of a free-wheeling plunge into Ela’s.

Jonah Hauer-King can currently be seen swimming up a storm alongside Halle Bailey in Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid” but for his next project he’s part of a different world – “World on Fire.”

The PBS and BBC drama series has released first look images from its upcoming second season, showing Hauer-King as a grimy soldier called Harry in the Royal Air Force (Raf) during World War II.

Jonah Hauer-King in ‘World on Fire’ (courtesy of BBC)

In the show, which was created by Peter Bowker, he is joined by “The Crown’s” Lesley Manville, Parker Sawyers (“A Discovery of Witches”) and Eugénie Derouand (“The Advent Calendar”).

In new images from Season 2 Manville, who plays Robina, looks elegant in a 1940s hair-do and outfit while Sawyers, who plays Albert, is pictured looking concerned, a Nazi flag visible behind him. Meanwhile Derouand is clad in a nurse’s outfit as Henriette.

Adventures Of A Mathematician Samuel Goldwyn Films Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Thor Klein Writer: Thor Klein Cast: Philippe Tlokinski, Esther Garrel, Fabian Kociecki, Joel Basman, Mateusz Wieclawek, Sam Keeley Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 9/22/21 Opens: October 1, 2021 I know that 2+2 equals 4 and […]

The post Adventures of a Mathematician Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

From the very beginning a deep sense of an impending tragedy pervades The Word (Obietnica), Polish filmmaker Anna Kazejak's naturalistic and somber coming-of-age thriller, creating a strangely disturbing yet thoroughly intriguing aura of uneasiness around the two main characters. A teenage girl (Eliza Rycembel) and her year-older boyfriend (Mateusz Wieclawek) are desperately trying to get in touch with their feelings and cope with a difficult situation that tore them apart in a matter of minutes. They're willingly distancing themselves from each other by means of modern technology and consequently stimulating various negative and positive emotions that lead them onto a path of radical choices and quiet self-destruction.The script makes the whole affair seem somewhat cryptic as it doesn't necessarily reveal the actual sequence of events...

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