16/05/2025 - CANNES 2025: Julia Kowalski plays a wicked game in a highly stylised feminist film, maliciously blending documentary realism and fantastic derangement

"My mother knelt before Satan. She had evil in her. I have it in me too." Welcome to the acutely inflammatory world of Julia Kowalski's Her Will Be Done [+see also:
interview: Julia Kowalski
film profile], a slimy film on the verge of psychological and psychedelic derangement that contaminated the 78th Cannes Film Festival's Directors’ Fortnight. But make no mistake: this second film by the Polish-born French filmmaker looks like a mystical, Kenneth Anger-style trip to the depths of the muddy French countryside, captured in all its banality. Having already made a name for herself with her first film Raging Rose [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and her short film I Saw the Face of the Devil (unveiled here in the Fortnight in 2023, then winner of the Prix Jean Vigo and the Grand Prix in the national competition at Clermont-Ferrand), Julia Kowalski returns with a work of liberation for the woman in her sleep.

“You who are in the fire, the one who burns and purifies, give me new life, whoever you are.” Trapped on the family farm between a loving Polish father (Wojtek Skibiński) wanting to keep her at home to protect her from the (enigmatic) demons that took her mother, and two very “down on their luck” older brothers (Przemyslaw Przestrzelski and Kuba Dyniewicz) who heckle her rudely, the obedient Nawojka (Maria Wróbel) dreams in vain of boarding at a veterinary school 50 kilometres away. She also prays a lot, convulsing in bed at night to resist the dark temptations that assail her, and her days are spent looking after the grey herd of cows. But then Sandra (Roxane Mesquida), a young woman with a sulphurous reputation, turns up to sell the house next door to her dead parents' home and pierces Nawojka's ordinary landscape. And then something else happens: the herd is gradually decimated by a mysterious epidemic...

“Nobody would believe a word of what happened”, “It's a game”. By seizing the codes of fantasy and horror cinema (flames, evil spells, forests, strange whitish masses, etc.) with great artistic radicalism (16mm, zoom, nightmarish dream flashes, hand-crafted effects on the frames) and blending them with a style very close to documentary, Julia Kowalski fashions a hybrid and bizarre work (sometimes verging on going off the rails) with a striking atmosphere (some very interesting work on colour by cinematographer Simon Beaufils and music by Daniel Kowalski). Punctuated by a remarkable scene of an unbridled wedding party, the film, under its feverish realism-satanic cloak, above all denounces toxic masculinity (with a vodka-fuelled “deer hunt” initiated by the uglier-than-life characters portrayed by Jean-Baptiste Durand and Raphaël Thiéry). Distant hints of Deliverance and The Exorcist mingle in a feature film that invokes spells and is bathed in the dark heart of feminine desire. So be it.

Her Will Be Done was produced by Grande Ourse Films (France) and co-produced by Venin Films (France) and Orka Film (Poland). WTFilms handles international sales.

(Translated from French)