Pictures of Apolonia – they’re everywhere: from videotapes of her birth to oil-painted self-portraits. Rarely has it been so hard to elude a main character: in her eyes is the lightness of youth, the artist’s willingness to take risks. After growing up in her parents’ theatre in Paris, Apolonia moves to Denmark with her mother. Never really settling there, she rebuilds her life in France after finishing school and begins to study art. The attic becomes a studio, friends come and go. Some of them do stay – like the Femen activist Oksana. With her close by, Apolonia, driven by self-doubt and ambition, becomes compassionate, as if the companionship gives her the support she is looking for in art. Although, for Apolonia art is, as she herself once says, “not a project, it’s a continuation.”

Making this long-term study of her friend Apolonia Sokol from 2009 to 2022, Lea Glob has not only created a tribute to her: she has also explored what artistic emancipation can mean. Her film alternates between the dream of conquering the world through her own art and the market’s expectations of a woman as an artist. Whilst Apolonia can never fully escape the rules of art and capital, her body begins to rebel. And life also makes its mark on the bodies of her friends Oksana and the film-maker herself. While the women aren’t always able to help each other and the increasing political struggles test their strength, the film manages to show, even in the most frightening moments, that friendship can form a bond of solidarity.