Can freedom truly be free? This is the eternal question that Polish filmmakers Helena Ganjalyan and Bartosk Skpak seek to unravel in their hauntingly beautiful Glorious Summer. Set within the confines of a palatial Renaissance estate, three women (Ganjalyan, Magdalena Fejdasz-Hanczewska, and Daniela Komędera) have willingly surrendered their autonomy in favor of having their needs met by some unseen higher power. Their days are spent swimming, sunbathing, jogging, feasting, laughing, reading, and practicing for their inevitable escape from the property line they are forbidden from crossing.
Hailed as an experimental film, Ganjalyan and Skpak use the film to entertain and horrify in the very same breath. It peels back the layers of femininity, exploring what it means to sacrifice self for safety, to acknowledge the illusion of choice that society presents women, and the immutability of all of these, regardless of attempts to rail against the system.
An unseen, all-providing system (which eerily sounds like a Google Nest) ensures that the three women want for nothing. Each day they are expected to kneel before a vertical sliver of light and venerate it for the wonders of the glorious day they had before. What did they learn? What did they experience? What did they enjoy? It’s a repetition designed to reinforce that they only enjoy these glorious summer days because of this omnipresent force. When they fight or act out, they’re punished for shattering the illusion of peace. Each of the three women represents a specific and familiar response to their idyllic, blessed life: Ganjalyan as the questioning agnostic; Komędera as the blindly loyal sheep; and Fejdasz-Hanczewska as the disillusioned apostate.
‘Glorious Summer’ Embraces the Liminality of Isolation

Image via Rozbrat Films

Liminal spaces tend to be paired with a sense of freedom: the backrooms of an empty office are void of the burden of capitalism; the early hours at an airport terminal evoke a sense of freedom; and childhood summers are filled with guileless innocence. Here, the liminality of isolation feels pitiless, mocking. These women are given everything and yet, they live within the confines of a crumbling palace, devoid of personality. It’s an allegory for the hollow grandeur of financial freedom. They have everything, and yet, they look toward the perimeter and what they have been warned away from. What if there is something better, just over the fence? Even that concept is tainted with the idea that they must die to achieve it. Only through quiet submission and death are they afforded something better than their current lives.
There are echoes of influence from American filmmakers like Sofia Coppola and Ari Aster found throughout Glorious Summer, but Ganjalyan and Skpak craft a film that most American filmmakers couldn’t pull off. The film’s twist is delivered with a very Eastern European bluntness that requires no overexplanation or malevolent billionaires pulling the strings. Yet, even in its subtlety, there are overt and compelling visuals explored within the film’s sumptuous world. The film has something for everyone—those that enjoy being haunted by quiet contemplation when the credits roll, and those that prefer the blatant delivery of symbolism. One of the more obvious examples arrives when Fejdasz-Hanczewska is out for a jog, on the cusp of turning her machinations for freedom into a reality, and she encounters a wolf: a symbol of untamed freedom. Rather than being afraid of each other, the wolf embraces her, licks her face like a domesticated dog, before skirting away into the trees. It’s such a pure manifestation of where Fejdasz-Hanczewska is at mentally: a wild animal trapped within the promise of domesticity.
‘Glorious Summer’ Knows That Less Is More

Image via Rozbrat Films
 

Just as we are voyeurs into the lives of these three women, someone—or something—is surveilling them throughout the film. The unseen force that ensures their peaceful existence also ensures that they do not rebel against the system. The women develop a touch language to ensure that some conversations remain unnoticed, but they cannot truly escape the panopticon of their existence. When they start to question if life might be better on the other side, they are met with the sounds of war: bombs make contact somewhere over the wall, shaking the very foundations of their palace, nay existence. In a sense, this parallels what it is like to break free of religious orders, where you’re met with apocalypticism to keep you sweet, to make you obey. When the threat of war and strife doesn’t shake their plans, a strange woman (Weronika Humaj) returns to the fold to sow seeds of doubt about the “other place”. It’s also a clever device for the filmmakers to never truly reveal the mechanism behind this glorious existence. Even when they show their hand, and peel away some of the layers, it’s just enough to leave audiences curious and satisfied.

Glorious Summer

A sun-drenched examination of the sacrifice of self that safety brings.

Release Date

March 8, 2025

Helena Ganjalyan

Uncredited

Pros & Cons

A glorious and haunting examination of femininity and the false promise of freedom.
Glorious Summer is everything that filmmakers should aspire to make: a film with a voice and vision.
Helena Ganjalyan and Bartosk Skpak are keen filmmakers that know how to frame scenes to evoke a sense of dread and awe.
The cast’s chemistry is hypnotic, particularly in some of the quieter moments.