APOLONIA, APOLONIA

Lea Glob has followed the Danish-French artist Apolonia Sokol over 13 years. The result is an extraordinarily up-close and personal film that is both a portrait of the life of a unique artist and of the budding friendship and intimacy between two women over a (very) long and formative period in their lives. The charismatic Sokol was almost born to be an artist. The child of a French father and a Polish mother, she was born in a theatre in Paris and grew up in the city’s rambunctious bohemian milieu before taking up painting and training as an artist herself. Sokol’s friendship with Ukrainian artist and activist Oksana Shachko of the feminist group Femen becomes a dramatic and heartbreaking turning point. Apolonia, Apolonia won the top prize at the IDFA documentary festival last year.