HER WILL BE DONE
(director/writer: Julia Kowalski; screenwriter: Simon Beaufils; cinematographer: Simon Beaufils; editor: Isabelle Manquillet; music: Daniel Kowalski; cast: Maria Wróbel (Nawojka), Roxane Mesquida (Sandra), Wojciech Skibiński (Henryk), Kuba Dyniewicz (Bogdan), Przemysław Przestrzelski (Tomek), Raphaël Thiéry (Badel, village butcher), Jean-Baptiste Durand (Dr. Franck, veterinarian), Eva Lallier Juan (Alice, French bride of Tomek); Runtime: 95; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Estelle Robin You; Yellow Veil Pictures; 2025-France-in Polish, French)
“An unnerving folk/horror thriller.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
An unnerving folk/horror thriller about a young woman seeking freedom from an old-fashioned religious family directed by French-Polish filmmaker Julia Kowalski (“Raging Rose”). She co-writes it with Simon Beaufils.
The physically tiny Nawojka (Maria Wróbel), called Naw, is a conflicted 20-year-old woman living with her strict widowed Polish migrant cattle farmer father Henryck (Wojciech Skibinski) and her bullying older brothers Tomek (Przemyslaw Przestrzeiski) and Bogdan (Kuba Dyniewicz) in a small-minded rural village in France. She believes an ancient family curse is hexing her (fearing she might have inherited her mother’s evil nature that led to her insanity).
When the mysterious young woman with a checkered past, the pink-haired and leg brace wearing Sandra (Roxane Mesquida) returns to live again in the village, she moves in next door to Naw. When Naw plans to leave home to go to a distant veterinary school to follow her career dream despite her father’s objections, she’s encouraged by Sandra to make the move.
Meanwhile her father’s cows are dying from a mucus disease. The veterinarian, Dr. Franck (Jean-Baptiste Durand), euthanizes the cattle but Naw acts to save them.
The unsettling film delivers a hard look at how brutal life can be in backward remote areas among people set in their obsolete ways who are unwilling to evolve, and that maybe it takes a religious type of exorcism (or some sort of witchcraft) to become free of being possessed.
Wróbel’s animated performance keeps things kicking for this provocative feminist-themed film.
It played at Cannes Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 9/18/2026 GRADE: B-
dennisschwartzreviews.com