We meet Apolonia Sokol as she prepares for her 26th birthday party. A shaving cream beard coats her face as she trims her bangs in the mirror, hair trickling into the sink below. The first voice we hear, however, is not of Apolonia, Apolonia‘s subject, but director Lea Glob, who narrates the moment she captures behind her camera.
The Danish filmmaker met Sokol, a contemporary French painter, in 2009 when she set out to portray her on camera for a film school project — the result being 13 years of candid footage, spanning Sokol’s unconventional bohemian upbringing in her parents’ theater to her later accomplishments as a professional figure painter. Striking and tender, the film divulges Sokol’s evolution in both her own identity and art — two things she sees as interconnected.
As a voyeur to Sokol’s life, Glob ushers viewers into her subject’s inner circle, showing her dumped, birthed — even conceived, via VHS tape gifted by Sokol’s parents, affectionally labeled “don’t watch until you’re 18.” While Glob might be mistaken as a fly on the wall, the 13-year saga makes it clear that only a close confidant could capture Sokol in such a thorough portrait.
Glob trades traditional talking heads for candid chats on crowded Paris streets and bedroom floors, building an intimate progression of their relationship throughout Apolonia, Apolonia. Glob makes the most of any space Sokol occupies, catching details like framed paintings, roaming cats and cluttered dining tables that bring us into the room with her. Many shots mimic a home video: Hazy, shaky and out of focus. Glob’s preference for candidness over perfection accentuate her portrayal of Sokol, one disinterested in glorifying and more interested in documenting in as much detail as possible.
Nonetheless, picturesque views of Sokol amidst her surroundings showcase that which Glob admires in her subject as she documents her ever-fluctuating landscape. Sokol traverses the art world with a rare and exhilarating conviction, confidently immersing herself in the underground art scene of New York City, earning a degree from the Beaux-Arts de Paris and working in Los Angeles with contemporary art buyer Stefan Simchowitz, notorious for exploiting young artists to profit from his network of high-profile clients.
Through her art, Sokol aims to reject gender expectations by empowering women with her paintings, freeing her female subjects of patriarchal restrictions and presenting them in a more authentic light. Bolstering these feminist ideas, Sokols point out her experiences with sexism in the art world, like a male professor who says he finds her personality more interesting than her art. Additionally, when members of Ukrainian feminist group Femen flee to Paris, Sokol takes them into her theater, hosting a new headquarters for the activist group. One of the women who sought refuge at the theater, Oksana Shachko, becomes Sokol’s Oksana Shachko. The film divulges the almost matrimonial relationship between the two women, who bonded over their use of art as a defense against the patriarchal world. The women who come and go across the 13 years captured in Glob’s film accentuate Sokol’s story, revealing truths about friendship, representation and female solidarity.
At the beginning of Apolonia, Apolonia, Glob proclaims her goal: To create an eternal portrait of her subject, one that evokes the paintings of kings. She accomplishes this feat, leaving a dazzling record of Sokol’s life that champions and carries on her legacy as an artist. It feels as if in the 13 years of shooting, Glob rarely turned off her camera, utterly captivated by her subject, and the result leaves us just as transfixed. Though she rarely appears on screen, Glob’s presence in the film shows how the women on either side of the camera inspire each other in tandem. As both women face tragedies toward the end of the documentary, their support for one another punctuates their bond and parallel experiences of womanhood.
Director: Lea Glob
Writer: Lea Glob
Release Date: January 12, 2024
Sage Dunlap is a journalist based in Austin, TX. She currently contributes to Paste as a movies section intern, covering the latest in film news.