Lea Glob on her journey with Apolonia Sokol
When art and life melt together in a magnificent and hypnotizing portrait
Friday night in Montreuil. The is the projection of the documentary with the teams.
I think the world “documentary” is not even right as it’s truly a masterpiece, no words to describe such an incredible storie behind this artist.
We all had a great chat after the projection.
She explained she got to meet Harvey Weinstein through her art dealer just before the #metoo movement came up. He wasn’t interested in her arts but said “ You have charisma, you should be in my next movie. Why don’t you come up in my room for a casting? ”
It makes you shudder to see how life can twist in a minute sometimes. Hopefully for Apolonia, she already got such a strong personality and said “ But I already have a movie, talking about this student documentary she was filming, I don’t care. ”
This is so inspiring to witness such a young female artist struggling with her future in the art world and how to survive basically.
“I don’t believe there’s a difference between my personal being and my work ”
Apolonia Sokol told Artsy before a recent screening of Apolonia, Apolonia, a new documentary film spanning 13 years of the French artist’s life directed by her friend, Danish director Léa Glob.
The film intimately chronicles Sokol’s artistic and personal growth—evidence, in itself, of her belief that art develops alongside life. Reflecting on the period documented by the movie, she added, “The paintings get better, and the thoughts, the philosophy, and everything gets sharper. That’s a natural thing.”
From there, the documentary traverses Sokol’s entire career, offering a vulnerable and transparent look inside the life of a struggling artist, defined by Sokol’s resilience. After graduating from École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Sokol traveled to the United States, where she ended up sponsored by art collector and dealer Stefan Simchowitz. Under Simchowitz’s approach to art dealing, she produced 10 paintings per month. In the documentary, Glob wryly critiques his methods in a voiceover, pointing out, “Why only buy the art when it’s so much cheaper to buy the artist?”
“It’s only men telling me what to do,” Sokol told Artsy, reflecting on patrons, critics, and art teachers featured in the film. “Every single time. But this is the society we live in, right? There is this constant glass ceiling, and I try to keep on going.”
Today, Sokol creates art to directly challenge patriarchal norms, a stance prompted by her experience in Los Angeles. These experiences inspire a feminist upheaval in her new work, especially notable in her reinterpretation of Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera (ca. 1470). Her work LE PRINTEMPS [Spring] Linda, Nicolas, Raya, Dustin, Simone, Nirina, Claude, Bella, Dourane (2020) is a deliberate response to trans-exclusionary perspectives, featuring a group of nine trans and cisgender women together. Sokol’s work reimagines Botticelli’s narrative of fertility and consent by empowering each figure with an assertive, confident stance, celebrating the autonomy and diversity of all women.
For over a decade, the artist lived a documented life—cataloged and framed by Glob’s camera lens. Her portraits have become more personal, as she has turned more introspective, away from the public gaze. This year, Sokol landed in Pablo Picasso’s old studio in Paris—an ironic turn for the artist attempting to challenge the canon. She didn’t mince words when talking about the Spanish Cubist, saying: “I spit on his grave.”
Besides Apolonia and Glob, the film has another significant protagonist: Oksana Shachko, one of the founders of the radical feminist activist group Femen, who came to Paris from Ukraine as an asylum-seeker and found herself in Apolonia's theater. She killed herself in 2018.
"Oksana is really one of the women that has mattered in this age that we are in; she really started something. I think she will never be forgotten," Glob says.
Oksana's death was a tragedy both for Apolonia and Glob, but it helped them recognize that this was not just a case of a filmmaker making a documentary about an artist: it was about a relationship between two artists, documented by camera.
It’s finally out in all the theaters in Paris. Do yourself a favor and go watch it now !
Beautiful & strong 💪🏼