Wheelchair accessible | In Polish; with English and descriptive subtitles

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One of the defining works of post-war Polish cinema, Mother Joan of the Angels follows a priest sent to a remote convent to investigate reports of demonic possession among the nuns. As he attempts to exorcise Mother Joan, the convent’s possessed prioress, he becomes increasingly unsettled and drawn to her. Their encounter develops into a spiritual and moral struggle in which religious fervour, suppressed passion and the desire for salvation become entangled with the fear of sin and the presence of evil. Drawing on the same 17th-century Loudun possessions later revisited by Ken Russell in The Devils, Kawalerowicz takes a radically different approach. Shot in stark black and white, with severe compositions and stripped-back settings, the film replaces baroque spectacle with formal restraint, ritual and psychological tension, giving the drama an austere, almost abstract intensity.

Content notes: exorcism and demonic possession; flagellation; psychological distress; partial nudity and sexual themes; murder.

Curated by Ania Wieczorkowska