You already do not know how to arrange your screening schedule, and what to choose from among so many excellent titles, even though we have not even announced the full programme yet? We are very sorry, but today we are only going to make this task even more difficult. We are pleased to announce another outstanding film to be screened as part of this year's New Horizons (18-28 July).
The festival programme will be fed into by Coralie Fargeat's The Substance, one of the most talked-about titles of this year's Cannes IFF (best screenplay award), starring fantastic Demi Moore. The Substance is going to be screened thanks to a partnership with Monolith Films, which will distribute the picture from 20 September.
The Substance: fresh blood in body horror
The Substance was undoubtedly one of the most talked-about titles of this year's main competition at Cannes (and has already managed to garner fantastic reviews from Polish critics). This is mainly thanks to the bravura Demi Moore, for whom the role of ageing celebrity Elizabeth Sparkle makes a spectacular career breakthrough. No wonder that her performance received a several-minute-long ovation. The excellent Moore is matched by the talented, brilliant Margaret Qualley (known for her roles in the already iconic series Maid and Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), who is growing into a new cinema icon. Their film duel is a genuine acting feast. Dennis Quaid, cast in an unusual role, is also a cracker worthy of special mention. And last but not least: The Substance proves that body horror is a genre that has received a powerful injection of fresh blood thanks to female directors (Lucile Hadžihalilović, Julie Ducournau and Rose Glass, to name just a few).
The film by French director Coralie Fargeat is set in a world that tells women to become an even ‘better version of themselves’, i.e. to chase mercilessly high standards of beauty. So when fitness star Elizabeth Sparkle turns 50, bosses of the station, in which she hosts her show, decide to replace her with a younger trainer. However, devastated and humiliated Sparkle receives a proposal from a mysterious laboratory, which offers her the eponymous substance that will make her younger, more beautiful and perfect in every way. Can an ageing woman turn down such an offer?
Fargeat's film is devilishly sharp satire on Hollywood: phenomenally stylised, brilliantly confronting the gushingly desirable youthful world of media, film and portals with the hidden, dark backstage theatre of beauty and desire. Mawkish and bloody, sweet and repulsive, full of black humour, The Substance reflects the experience of many actresses, building careers on the beauty capital. Yet, this body horror is at the same time poignant and unabashed when offering much more profound diagnoses, in which external expectations, internalised self-hatred, the beauty and the entertainment industry endlessly discipline women's bodies and souls. (description by Małgorzata Sadowska)
The 24th mBank New Horizons International Film Festival will be held in Wrocław between 18 and 28 July. If you cannot join it, you can invite the festival to your home for a week longer – until 4 August, thanks to the online version of the event. The full programme will be announced on 2 July, and two days later, on 4 July, ticket sales will begin.