‘Apolonia, Apolonia’: IDFA Review

Dir: Lea Glob. Denmark/Poland/France. 2022. 112mins

Winner of the International Competition at IDFA, Apolonia, Apolonia is the absorbingly intimate portrait of an artist as a young woman over the transformative span of 13 years. Very much a collaborative affair between subject Apolonia Sokol and Danish filmmaker Lea Glob, it also functions as a snapshot of millennial creatives and their struggles to balance public and private lives amid external financial and psychological pressures. Glob’s 2015 docufiction Olmo and the Seagull, co-directed with Petra Costa, played in dozens of festivals worldwide; her debut solo feature-length outing looks set for a similarly busy career on the back of its Dutch triumph.

 Glob’s film truly comes alive when its has a dual or preferably triple focus

Glob initially started the project as a humble film-school assignment back in 2009, when she correctly identified the Danish-French Apolonia — at the time living a quintessentially bohemian existence in the radical Paris theatre run by her parents — as ideal material for a documentary profile. This ended up becoming an epic endeavour comparable with Richard Linklater’s dozen-year Boyhood (2014) and the decades-spanning praxis perfected by Czech veteran Helena Trestikova. She breaks no new ground stylistically; indeed, Jonas Struck’s rather busy score hits familiar and conventional notes throughout. But in this sub-genre of documentary the two crucial elements are an unusual, compelling main “character” and high levels of access and trust; Apolonia, Apolonia amply fulfils both criteria.

Condensing such a huge amount of footage into manageable feature length was clearly no easy task, with two editors and two co-editors credited —  Glob seems to have recused herself from cutting duties. The result has a roughly tripartite structure, with Apolonia’s mid-2010s stint in New York and Los Angeles sandwiched between her late teenage years in Paris (where she studies painting at the Beaux Arts) and a conclusion back in Europe (where in her early thirties she finally finds professional and personal fulfilment.)

While primarily concerned with its eponymous heroine, Apolonia, Apolonia is decidedly at its strongest when the spotlight is shared by other prominent protagonists. The first and third sections are significantly autobiographical: Glob includes many aspects of her own life here, and emphasises the bonds of friendship and camaraderie between herself and Apolonia. And then there is Oksana, a Ukrainian feminist activist who becomes Apolonia’s “soulmate” and muse in Paris, and who forms the third point of a warmly supportive triangle of strong, intelligent, relentlessly self-questioning women.

The United States mid-section is rather less compelling than the other two parts, the filmmaking mode switching from intimate engagement to more detached observation as an increasingly isolated Apolonia struggles to maintain her personal vision in a harshly “industrial” American art-world.

Just as Apolonia’s work — entirely portraiture — is at its most effective when depicting groups rather than individuals, Glob’s film truly comes alive when its has a dual or preferably triple focus. The emotionally heavy latter stretches, which feature both new life and jarring tragedy, conclude proceedings on moving notes of hard-won maturity for both Sokol and Glob. And we are left with the suspicion — and the hope — that this will not prove their final cinematic collaboration.