To Kill This Love, Mother Joan of the Angels

A scrappy, bitterly funny, and ultimately heartbreaking love story set against the harsh backdrop of the communist regime, To Kill This Love shows what it was like to be young at the turn of the 1970s in Poland. While Neil Armstrong lands on the moon, a couple discovers love and life in the big city. Quotas keep them from getting into the university, so the only option to reach their ambitions of independence seems to be entering the mean, conformist reality surrounding them. (96 mins., DCP) Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Mother Joan of the Angels is a strikingly designed and feverishly intense spiritual drama. A devout father arrives in a remote 17th century Polish town to investigate a case of demonic possession in the local convent, where the nuns are prone to episodes of hysteria and sexually charged frenzies. The priest must then choose between sacrificing his own purity and saving the convent from evil. (110 mins., DCP)

Organized by Propaganda Foundation, DI Factory, and Cyfrowe Repozytorium Filmowe, Warsaw, and The Film Foundation, New York and Los Angeles; in cooperation with Milestone Film and Video, New Jersey, and Studio Filmowe Tor, Zebra Studio Filmowe, and Studio Filmowe KADR, Warsaw; and with the support of The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, Polish Film Institute, and National Audiovisual Institute, Warsaw.

Cosponsored by Ohio State’s Department of Slavic and Eastern European Languages and Cultures and its Polish Studies Initiative, the Polish American Club, and the Ohio State Polish Club.