Teresas Körper (Teresas Body)

“My spine is about to snap at any moment.” Teresa lives with a body that bears the scars of pain and violence. Her daughter Magda draws closer to her in a poetic blend of fiction, memory, and documentary observation. Between the two women, spaces open up in which past and present, dream and reality merge. Beneath the cherry tree, whose blood-red fruits become a recurring symbol, Magda and her sister Ola search for a way out of their family’s history. Dance becomes a means of reclaiming their own bodies. Whilst Teresa is scarred by the consequences of patriarchal violence and long-standing trauma, her daughters seek freedom and self-determination. In her insistent feature-length debut, Magdalena Chmielewska transforms the body into a place of memory: backs, knees, hands, and skin speak of vulnerability but also of resistance.

TERESA’S BODY is an unusual, atmospherically dense film about familial influences, the female experience, and the attempt to break free from the shackles of the past.