SFJFF Film Screening of Joanna

Director Feliks Falk spins a gripping story about Joanna, a Polish woman (Urszula Grabowska) to whom fate presents a split-second choice: to hide a young Jewish girl who she finds sleeping in a church. When seven-year-old Rose is separated from her mother in German-occupied Warsaw during a round up, she seeks refuge in the pews where Joanna goes to pray. Joanna, a piano teacher who is waiting to hear news of her soldier husband who she has not seen in years, takes the child home and they embark on a relationship that helps to heal their losses. The contrasts between the bleaks streets of Warsaw and the terror-ridden, paranoid interactions between the Poles, and the warmth of Joanna's home and heart are sharp and highlight the strain of trying to live normally during wartime. Joanna's family wonders why she has become increasingly isolated, while Joanna faces difficult decisions if Rose is to survive.
Falk, part of a school of Polish directors called "The Cinema of Moral Anxiety," expertly directs Grabowska, who gives a tour-de-force performance as a woman separated from her husband and struggling with fear. Falk's experience as a painter and a theatre director are evident in the grey palette of wintertime Warsaw and in the shades of grey that war brings to bear on morality.