Nowe Horyzonty: Jak zostałam perliczką

The latest production from the A24 studio won the Best Director award at Cannes. The Zambia-born director of I Am Not a Witch once again blends realism with poetry and surrealism with naturalism. She sketches a portrait of a local community that cannot escape toxic tradition and family values combined with patriarchy, which reduces women to the roles of servants and mothers.

We meet Shula in the middle of the night, as she’s returning from a party. She stumbles across the dead body of her uncle. A brutal and absurd show ensues, and everyone plays a predefined role in it. The wrongdoings of her deceased uncle come to light – it turns out everyone knew about them, but you cannot speak ill about a dead person. And you cannot speak at all about the victims – women. As tradition has it.