Mother Joan of the Angels

^director Jerzy Kawalerowicz
^screenplay (based on the story of the same name by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz) Tadeusz Konwicki, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz
^{director of photography} Jerzy Wójcik
^music Adam Walaciński
^with Lucyna Winnicka, Mieczysław Voit, Anna Ciepielewska, Maria Chwalibóg, Kazimierz Fabisiak, Stanisław Jasiukiewicz, Zygmunt Zintel
^awards
 Jury Special Prize at Cannes Film Festival, 1961
 New West German Critics’ Award at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, 1961
 FIPRESCI Prize (together with ‘Knife in the Water’); ‘Tribunascope’ Best Actress Award for Lucyna Winnicka; Best Actress in Supporting Role for Anna Ciepielewska and Best Actor in Supporting Role for Zygmunt Zintel at the International Film Festival in Panama, 1966
 Crystal Star – Award of the French Film Academy for Lucyna Winnicka, 1961
 1st Class Award of the Ministry of Culture and Art for Jerzy Kawalerowicz and Jerzy Wójcik, 1962
 Warsaw Mermaid (Syrenka Warszawska) – Film Critics Club SDP Award, 1961
 ’Film’ magazine Readers Award, Golden Duck (Złota Kaczka), 1961

JAROSŁAW IWASZKIEWICZ, MOTHER JOAN OF THE ANGELS [MATKA JOANNA OD ANIOŁÓW], 1946

Exactly – Suryn took it up with eagerness – are they real demons? And what are demons anyway? Rabbi Ishe suddenly lost his indifference, his face twitched in a strange way and his eyes went sparkling. In the end he laughed. – So you, Reverend Father, come to a poor rabbi, to ask what demons are? You don’t know, Father? Didn’t they teach you at the lectures of holy theology? Don’t you know, Reverend? Are you hesitant, Reverend? Then maybe it’s not demons, maybe it’s just the absence of angels? – he laughed again. – The angel flew away from mother Joan and she was left to her own devices. Maybe it’s all just our own human nature?

SEWERYN KUŚMIERCZYK, ‘MOTHER JOAN OF THE ANGELS’. AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY [‘MATKA JOANNA OD ANIOŁÓW’. SZKIC ANTROPOLOGICZNY], ‘KINO’, 1997, NO. 17

Can it be so that the sun shining over the nunnery, despite its brilliance and high position on the horizon, would not give out heat? (…) The demons left the nunnery and took control of all the space. How to explain the mystery of the all-embracing evil? (…) The mission of Rev. Suryn ends in failure. Then maybe it is not him but the viewer who should ask the assuaging question (…), treating Kawalerowicz’s picture as a work of much more important content than just a love story of a priest and a nun? Let’s return to the film’s beginning, to the shot revealing a cross made up by the frames of the window. It was at this cross that Rev. Suryn was praying (…). This is the window which allows us to understand the drama presented in the film. This window is the cross.