Ida

Screening Dates:
Tue 28 October 6:15pm
Thu 30 October 9:00pm

Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Cast: Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik

In Polish with English subtitles.

This haunting London Film Festival winner from Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (My Summer Of Love) begins as Anna (Trzebuchowska), a teenage novitiate nun, is about to take her final vows in a rural convent.

Fate intervenes when her hard-living, hard-drinking aunt (Kulesza) persuades the Mother Superior to let Anna visit her in Gdansk – whereupon her true identity as Ida is revealed, and in their different ways the two women face some unsettling realities.

Filming for the first time in his homeland, Pawlikowski uses gritty monochrome and an almost square screen format to successfully evoke the bleakness and anxiety of the Communist era. The two leads, especially the luminous newcomer Trzebuchowska, perfectly convey the quietly complex emotions with which their characters struggle.