Private Project

Growing

Ewa’s life is seemingly monotonous, but the accompanying soundtrack makes for real cacophony. In the foreground, there are calls from a nagging mother, or tirades by nursing lecturers made in a robotic tone.
Exposed to a mixture of good advice, prohibitions and conservative nonsense, Ewa’s mind begins to play tricks on her. „Growing” is a commentary on the limitation of the right to abortion and the related situation of Polish women, which the film discusses in the horror convention.

  • Agata Wieczorek
    Director
  • Agata Wieczorek
    Writer
  • Natalia Trebik
    Producer
  • Dominika Walo
    Key Cast
    "Ewa"
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Student, Other
  • Genres:
    Fiction, horror, body-horror
  • Runtime:
    17 minutes 44 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    February 5, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    16,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    France
  • Country of Filming:
    France
  • Language:
    Polish
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital, Arri Alexa
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1:1.85
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Le Fresnoy - Studio National des arts contemporains
  • Court Métrange Film Festival
    Rennes
    France
    September 27, 2022
    Grand Prix
  • Gerardmer International Film Festival
    Gerardmer
    France
    January 29, 2023
    Official selection
  • New Horizons International Film Festival
    Wroclaw
    Poland
    July 26, 2022
    Polish
    Official selection : Shortlista
  • WENCH Film Festival
    Mumbai
    India
    March 17, 2023
    India
    Grand Prix (Dwarves Award)
  • FEST : New Directors
    Esphino
    Portugal
    June 24, 2022
    Portugese
    Official selection : Silver Lynx Award nomination
  • L'Etrange International Film Festival
    Paris
    France
    September 15, 2022
    Official Selection
  • THIS IS SHORT : New Point of View
    Online
    June 3, 2022
    Official selection for teh NEW Point of View Competition
  • Vienna Shorts
    Vienna
    Austria
    Nomination to THIS IS SHORT competition
  • CONCORTO International Film Festival
    Piacenza
    Italy
    August 27, 2022
    Deep Night section
  • Panorama 23 - Le Fresnoy exhibition
    Tourcoing
    France
    September 24, 2021
    Le Prix Analix - prize for the best film work
  • MEME PAS PEUR, le Festival International du Film Fantastique de La Réunion
    St Philippe
    Réunion
    March 8, 2023
    Reunion
    Official Selection
  • ANALIX FOREVER Gallery
    Geneva
    Switzerland
    January 18, 2023
    Le Prix Analix
Distribution Information
  • Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains
    Distributor
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Agata Wieczorek

Agata Wieczorek
b. 22/01/1992, Łódź, Poland

Wieczorek’s practice combines film and photography while moving between constructed documentary and documented fiction.
She graduated from The National Film School in Lodz, and from Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains.
She is the Irish Research Council Award 2023 Recipient for her artistic and research work on reproductive rights. She now develops her related filmic projects and PhD research within the IRC Scholarship in Dublin City University.
Her film and artistic works have been showcased at art museums and film festivals and awarded internationally such as at Art Basel Miami, Finnish Museum of Photography, Gerardmer IFF, Nowe Horyzonty IFF.
She now lives and works between Dublin and Paris.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

An important element of my work is the intersection of violence, control vis-à-vis caress and eroticism.
I observe this ambivalent relationship as characteristic for the Western view on the body, which makes it an object of fantasies, erotic role-playing and medical procedures that blend the eroticized fascination with the body, with violence.
To create spaces for discussion on taboos around gender, sexuality and reproduction, I use objects: medical artefacts, fetishes, elements of BDSM practices. I transform them into animated characters or objects mediating stories, which allow to enter the hidden domain of erotic fantasies and practices; obstetrical practices and medical laboratories; getting under the skin of bio-political reality.
Animation, photography and film become the means of penetrating these zones, as well as the surfaces where touch and sight are played out.The figure of an objectified body, or of a body changed into an object, allows me to draw out how trans, queer or pregnant bodies become a hybrid space: the host of the most intimate, and, at the same time, the subject of public and political discourse.