MQFF Midsumma Movies: Woman of...

MQFF brings you a sizzling weekend of the newest and most fabulous queer cinema

One of the greatest contemporary Polish filmmakers, Małgorzata Szumowska (Mug, 2018, and the Teddy Award-winning In the Name of, 2013), here shares directing duties with brilliant cinematographer Michał Englert (as with 2020’s Never Gonna Snow Again), to tell a story spanning 45 years of beleaguered trans woman Aniela Wesoły’s life, against a backdrop of Poland’s transition from communism to capitalism.

Mateusz Wieclawek and Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik (a dead ringer for Judith Butler!) are both superb as Aniela at different challenging stages in her life, in a famously Catholic nation staunchly hostile to the gender non-conforming. Augmented by a great turn from Cold War’s Joanna Kulig, this hugely compassionate film doesn’t sugarcoat a lot of harsh Polish realities, but also makes no bones about whom it wishes the audience to feel solidarity with. (Pun intended, per the film’s title, which alludes to Andrzej Wajda’s labour movement-exalting classics, Man of Iron and Man of Marble.)

• Director: Małgorzata Szumowska, Michał Englert
• Country: Poland, Sweden (2023)
• Rating: Unclassified 18+
• Runtime: 126 minutes