Canadian Premiere
A dazzling whirlwind, Apolonia Sokol seemingly lives an enchanted life: as the daughter of actor parents, she is surrounded by poets, artists, and intellectuals, and lives in a vast Parisian building home to an experimental theatre company. She puts on plays, hosts dinner parties for bohemians, and opens her dilapidated home to exiled Ukranian feminist activists. Apolonia is charming, captivating, and is the center of her social circle, switching effortlessly between French, English, Danish and Polish. She also happens to be an immensely talented artist with singular vision and drive.
Filming over 13 years, director Lea Glob follows the young French painter and chronicles her intense struggles to succeed in the patriarchal and capitalist art world. Apolonia, Apolonia is joyful, inspiring, and intimate; it is a portrait of the vibrant, charismatic force that is Apolonia, but is also a remarkable document of the friendship and creative interplay between the filmmaker and her subject.
The absorbingly intimate portrait of an artist as a young woman over the transformative span of 13 years.
Screen International
Presented by
Series Media Partner
Community Partner
Apolonia Sokol, Oksana Shachko, Lea Glob
Denmark/Poland
2023
Portraits
In Danish, English, French with English subtitles
Self Harm, Suicide
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Sidsel Siersted
Cinematography
Lea Glob
Editor
Andreas Bøggild Monies,Thor Ochsnerb
Original Music
Jonas Struck
Director
Lea Glob
Lea Glob was born in Mariager, Denmark. Her debut documentary, Olmo & The Seagull (2015), was co-directed alongside Petra Costa. The film won the Young Jury Prize at Locarno, as well as Best Nordic Dox at CPH:DOX. Afterwards, Glob co-directed Venus (2016) with Mette Carla Albrechtsen. The film premiered in IDFA’s First Appearance Competition and won the audience award in IndieLisboa IIFF. Apolonia, Apolonia (2023) is the director’s first documentary feature as a solo-director.
Filmography: Olmo & The Seagull (2015); Venus (2016)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
To a Land Unknown
In this outstanding crime drama, two Palestinian cousins are exiled in Athens and in dire need of funds for fake passports to move their family to Germany. A slippery slope of moral compromise awaits as they resort to human smuggling and hostage-taking.
Drop Dead City
New York, 1975. The city is minutes away from bankruptcy and President Gerald Ford wants no part of it. Sanitation workers are on strike and cops are telling tourists it's not safe to visit. The town is going up in flames and they can't pay the firemen.
Sinners
This year's unexpected box office sleeper is that rare beast, a genre movie full of bold invention and surprise. We are in Mississippi in the early 1930s, and the opening of a new blues joint on the edge of town is the signal for all hell to break out.
The Graduate
In The Graduate Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman, 30 playing 20 with masterly understatement) comes home from college and is surprised to be seduced by the wife of his father's business partner, Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft).
blur: To the End
Now in their late 50s, Britpopsters blur (of Song 2 fame) do a celebratory lap of Great Britain culminating in their first ever Wembley Stadium show in this appealing observational doc. A companion piece to the concert film Live at Wembley Stadium.