After the film’s premiere and great success at the prestigious and influential Berlin film festival, some said Małgorzata Szumowska had stirred up a hornet’s nest. In fact, Face is a brutal portrait of provincial Poland—intolerant, conservative and internally divided. The inspiration for the director’s new film was the story of Grzegorz Galasiński, who had to undergo a face transplant after a serious accident. The film protagonist’s situation is similar: at a construction site in Świebodzin, Jacek is working on a gigantic sculpture of Jesus—bigger even than the one in Rio—when he falls from a scaffold. After a successful operation, Jacek goes through dramatic life changes: his fiancée leaves him; the locals point fingers at him and call him a freak; even his family sees the whole situation as God’s punishment for his sins. Jacek gets firsthand knowledge of the kind of intolerance he used to only experience in the form of crass jokes or drunken family discussions. Like in her previous movies, Szumowska boldly uses irony and dark humor—not just toward her characters, but also in portraying religious beliefs devoid of any deeper reflection. In this sense Face becomes a story about broader issues of identity.