16/05/2025 - CANNES 2025: The French director talks to us about the dark magic in her film, religion and her Polish roots

(© Fabrizio de Gennaro/Cineuropa)

Julia Kowalski returns to the Cannes Film Festival – after Raging Rose [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and I Saw the Face of the Devil – with Her Will Be Done [+see also:
film review
interview: Julia Kowalski
film profile], a tale where magic meets reality, or maybe it’s the other way around. It follows Nawojka (Maria Wróbel), who would love to leave the family farm behind, if only she were as brave as Sandra (Roxane Mesquida) and if only she didn’t have a dark secret. Her Will Be Done is screening in the Directors’ Fortnight.

Cineuropa: Starting with the title, you play with religious themes, but the biblical “Thy will be done” becomes a whole different statement. Did you grow up with religion?
Julia Kowalski: In English, we changed the title to Her Will Be Done, but in French, “My will be done” is the final phrase of every witchcraft ritual. It’s what makes it effective, but it’s also a malevolent reappropriation of the sacred formula of the prayer. It’s restoring all its power to the witch, instead of submitting to the will of God.

I didn’t have a religious upbringing. My parents were atheists, and this religious influence comes from my grandmother, who is a Jehovah’s Witness. We’re still very close. Her religious practice inspires me a lot in my work.

You have Polish roots, and this feeling of being in between countries and cultures is very present here. Why did you want to focus on a small community where this family seems to be doing just fine, yet they always speak Polish at home?
This is my own image of immigration, and this microcosm is a metaphor for society in general. The film is not autobiographical, but it’s inspired by what I felt as a child in France, coming from a Polish family. It’s conceived as a play, a closed-door, open-air setting, from which it’s very difficult to escape. Of course, it’s not a realistic portrait of the French countryside. Steering away from naturalistic imagery, Her Will Be Done heads more towards a visceral cinema of sensation.

Once you strip away all the supernatural, or at least odd, elements, it’s a story about women – their bodies, their dreams, their freedom. Why is it so hard to reclaim this freedom?
The world is still far from waking up when it comes to gender equality! My film deals with powerful women with two intertwined destinies: that of a young woman who, trapped in religion, refuses to embrace her desires and femininity; and that of a free woman who unleashes fury because no one can restrain her. Nawojka and Sandra could be two facets of the same person: one still needs to blossom while the other already fully embraces who she is.

I have no idea who “real” women are. I feel like I’ve spent my life looking at them like they’re UFOs. I’m not at all convinced I’m one. My mother was an absolute symbol of femininity: it fascinated and terrified me. I think that’s where the film comes from. That’s the special power of women, but being one, and accepting oneself as such, can still feel disturbing nowadays.

Times change, but people still love hunting witches. You talk about it very subtly, but were you thinking about any particular mythologies or tales?
This is a witch film. It’s entirely contemporary, but that figure is definitely there. Witchcraft, which has been completely trivialised by mainstream productions like Harry Potter, Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has become a folkloric practice that has lost its mystery, its power and its codes. And yet, the witch is the original figure of protest, a woman who – through her rebellion – challenges the very fundaments of society.

I want to give the witch her disturbing power again, and to make a “witch film” that shakes things up, questions and invites reflection. When I was a teenager, I considered myself a witch. I collected practical guides to black magic, to the art of making yourself invisible or making someone love you. I was trying to emancipate myself from reality or, again, from embracing my femininity. I might still not know what it means to be a woman, but being a witch is being a woman.

Do you consider yourself a genre filmmaker? Or do you simply enjoy playing with horror to talk about topics that are ultimately very relatable?
I don’t ask myself that question; I make films out of necessity. That’s how they come to me, how they haunt me, how they move through me and how I know I must make them. I’ve watched a lot of horror flicks, and that’s undeniably a part of my cinematic culture alongside Polish arthouse from the 1960s to the 1980s, or US cinema from the 1970s. Above all, I hope to make films that reflect me. That’s the most important thing. I leave it to the critics to label my films as “folk horror” or “terrifying realism”. It may amuse me, but it won’t guide me.

I prefer to let each viewer create their own trajectory and their own opinion about what they see – leaving space for imagination, rather than explaining and rationalising everything. And I like to leave a significant part close to reality, creating an almost documentary-like dimension. This porousness is crucial. I’ve always considered reality to be more terrifying than fiction.