Lea Glob’s (2015’s Olmo & the Seagull, co-directed with Petra Costa) Apolonia, Apolonia is an auspicious solo feature debut on multiple levels. Crafted patiently over a span of 13 years, the poignant doc, which took top prize in the international competition at last year’s IDFA, follows Apolonia Sokol, a young and wildly ambitious French figurative painter of Danish and Polish descent, who seems forever to be globetrotting headlong into the future – one that sees her catching up with the great masters of the art world. But perhaps also escaping a rather chaotic past that includes growing up in an underground theatre that her bohemian parents founded on the «wrong» side of the Seine.
The alter of high art
Yet the most surprising aspect of this unconventional drama is the all-consuming passion involved – Apolonia’s for her art rivalled only by Glob’s for her unbounded protagonist. (Indeed, when Apolonia’s boyfriend suddenly breaks up with her on camera, she can only ask why he couldn’t have timed it better – i.e., done so in January and thus given her inspiration to paint throughout the winter.) Tellingly, Apolonia also confesses that she can’t see the difference between her identity and her work, which might also explain her stunning unselfconsciousness in front of the lens. She’s far too focused on her artistic mission to set any self-preserving boundaries, be it between a Dane named Lea, who asked her to star in her first film school project, or a Ukrainian named Oksana, an artist and founder of the feminist activist group Femen, who ended up a political refugee in Paris with two broken arms after fleeing the Yanukovych regime’s security forces.
the most surprising aspect of this unconventional drama is the all-consuming passion involved
Though a willingness to sacrifice oneself on the altar of high art comes with an equally high price tag, of course. After banging her head one too many times on the glass ceiling of the (white male-dominated) European portraiture world, Apolonia heads across the pond to LA – and into the waiting arms (tentacles) of Stefan Simchowitz, the notorious, South Africa-born art collector that the NY Times dubbed (per the title of Christopher Glazek’s December 2014 magazine profile) «The Art World’s Patron Satan.» (Though fortunately, the determined painter meets some upstanding Americans like Mike White as well, who not only allows her into his house to photograph him but asks about her own expat life. When she mentions she’s looking to secure an extension on her visa – and has a meeting with Harvey Weinstein to discuss – he practically spits, «Harvey Weinstein?!” And then adds, «Take care», before giving the camera a look of dismay.)
Organically intertwined
«Sometimes there’s a fine line between coincidence and necessity», Glob offers in voiceover towards the end, just one of many poetic lines from a heartfelt narration that runs throughout the doc. If you «no longer fear fire, you can ignite your own flame instead», she adds. Apolonia discloses that throughout all the years’ Lea’s been following her life with a camera, Apolonia has likewise been following the director. Their worlds have become organically intertwined.
Indeed, Lea hypothesises that Apolonia knew instinctively that «the images we see create our world.» «She wanted the right to live in the world as a free person in her own image», she stresses. And because «the motif» (the only one that had ever «caught my eye as she did», Lea revealed at the very start) was constantly on the move, it took her 13 years to understand: «I had a camera aimed at life itself. Larger, tougher and more beautiful than I’d ever imagined… Life ends – and what remains is what we pass on.» The beauty we create. The stories we tell.
