Mother Joan of the Angels

“Maybe the trouble is not demons, but the absence of angels.”

Mother Joan of the Angels (Lucyna Winnicka) is the Mother Superior of a convent in Poland, and the nuns around her say she is possessed by eight demons. Father Józef Suryn (Mieczysław Voit) is sent to save her, a priest who comes to the convent confident in his duty. Kawalerowicz films the stark, whitewashed rooms and the nuns in their habits with a cold precision, and the place never lets him or the viewer forget how closed in it is.