Glorious Summer
In a dystopian debut reminiscent of Yorgos Lanthimos, three women are trapped in a Renaissance palace where a mysterious force grants their wishes.
Who wouldn’t dream of spending an endless summer in a crumbling Renaissance palace? M, H, and D spend their time drifting between sun-soaked afternoons, swimming pools, and wellness rituals, while the outside world seems to have disappeared. For these three women at the heart of Glorious Summer, this paradise is real, but it is governed by a single, unspoken rule: never cross the wall. Gradually, a silent language emerges for thoughts that can’t be spoken aloud, while a strange ritual takes shape: a rehearsal for death, a belief that it is the only possible escape. The idyllic retreat slowly begins to reveal itself as a carefully choreographed system of control.
Premiering at SXSW 2025, the feature debut of multidisciplinary directing duo Helena Ganjalyan and Bartosz Szpak constructs an uncanny world through richly textured 16mm cinematography, sensuous choreography, meticulously composed tableaux vivants, and a ghostly soundscape where silence become as expressive as dialogue. Glorious Summer shares with Yorgos Lanthimos’ early works a taste and tendency for estrangement and cryptic narratives, but transforms these influences into something distinctly its own and genuine. Glorious Summer unfolds as an unsettling exploration of authority, autonomy, and the seductive mechanisms through which control presents itself as care.
Diego Ginartes Rodríguez
Screenings
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Kino ReginaFri 18.9. at 21.00–22.2989 min, 1/3
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Gilda 1Sun 20.9. at 18.30–19.5989 min, 2/3
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Maxim 1Thu 24.9. at 16.40–18.0989 min, 3/3