09/09/2023 - VENICE 2023: Polish filmmaking duo Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert return to the Lido with a ground-breaking trans character study

Malgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik and Joanna Kulig in Woman of

Only two years after premiering Never Gonna Snow Again [+see also:
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film profile], filmmaking duo Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert are back on the Lido with their new film, Woman of [+see also:
trailer
interview: Małgorzata Szumowska, Micha…
film profile]. While the title is an homage to Polish auteur Andrzej Wajda and his influential movies Man of Iron and Man of Marble, Woman of reads more enigmatically. Not only is the gender swapped, but the ellipsis that follows testifies to the openness of both the film and the story it tells. This is the journey of Aniela (Malgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik), born and raised as Andrzej, who was forced to live more than half her life as a man and hide all aspects of her gender dysphoria. Behind the decision to stretch the plot over several decades lies not only a very apt metaphor for the transitional state of Poland between communism and capitalism, but more importantly, a contextualisation and historicisation of trans struggles made visible.

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Szumowska and Englert approached their Venice competition entry with a tremendous amount of care, and inclusion was the most important facet in its world-building. Trans stories can be reduced to metaphors or victimisation, or even be presented as an extension of self-harm practices. Woman of is neither: the casting was considered challenging enough for them not to employ a non-professional trans actor and run the risk of traumatising them again. For the main role, they wanted a trained performer, and they chose Hajewska-Krzysztofik well, as she is both convincing and taciturn in her strength. Behind the scenes, consultants, crew, cast and extras were employed to play roles of both trans and cis characters. For a country like Poland, voted the most homo- and transphobic country in the EU, this already marks a structural change.

Well before her transition, Aniela lived her public life as Andrzej (played by Mateusz Więcławek) in the small town of Tomaszów Lubelski, trying to keep a low profile. A rather shy kid and teenager, she stays out of trouble, but the price for that isolation already seems quite high. At the communion ceremony, young Andrzej is bullied for having long hair; at the conscription counter, the officers discover nail varnish on his toes and deem him mentally unfit to join the compulsory army service. He takes oestrogen pills and sells on the extra testosterone doses given to him by the doctor, hiding it all from his wife Iza (Cold War [+see also:
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Yet their love story starts off as a small miracle – a pioneer (Andrzej) and a nurse (Iza) lock eyes in the pouring rain during an Independence Day demonstration; they have a picnic, they chase each other, they kiss, they have a child to affirm that bond. Then the rupture comes, slowly and painfully, taking root in the cracks of their solid slice of happiness. Even when Poland is changing and so is Europe, never to be the same again (1989), marches flood the streets, but freedom for some is not equal freedom for everyone else. Aniela visits a doctor in Warsaw, enquiring about gender reassignment; she wears lingerie under her suit, and the road to fully inhabiting the body she always felt she deserved seems longer by the minute. Between 1980 and 2022, the film follows Aniela for more than 40 years, and because of this time frame, the question of passing is discussed in medical and pathological terms, while for Aniela, it's self-evident. She knows who she is, but the hard part is feeling accepted.

Szumowska and Englert have made a subtle film with revolutionary potential. Not only is it a deeply empathetic portrait of a woman who grows in a world that consistently denies her that very growth, but it is also a stance against reductionism and the rigidity of representation tropes. Woman of can be painstakingly real in the way it treats the pursuit of not only trans freedoms, but also trans rights, while knowing that if cinema has one power, it is that of transformation.

Woman of is a Polish-Swedish co-production staged by No-Mad Films and Plio, in co-production with Film i Väst and Common Ground Pictures. Memento handles international sales.