Kuba Dorabialski's debut feature "Agata the Writer" follows a novelist from Australia to Sarajevo, where she intends to write about the Bosnian War but immediately begins questioning her ability to do so authentically. The film premiered in the Giornate degli Autori sidebar at the Venice Film Festival.
Mia Wasikowska plays Agata, a Polish-Australian writer who has achieved success with satirical novels and is pursuing a shift toward more earnest work. She travels to Sarajevo to research a story about a father-daughter relationship during the war, hoping to draw on a connection between her Polish roots and the city's Slavic heritage.
Upon arrival, Agata feels conspicuously out of place in the wintry, severe city. As she explores Sarajevo, she grows less confident in her ability to write about its most painful period. A local theater director, Jasmina, confronts Agata's surface-level understanding, responding curtly when asked if she enjoyed the war years: "Enjoy? It was genocide." An unidentified thief also targets the art-filled house where Agata is staying, compounding her sense of displacement and growing self-doubt.
Dorabialski makes his most distinctive narrative choice by shifting focus to Agata's incomplete manuscript, delivered in voiceover, which halts the film's action. The script reads less like a novel than a screenplay. Dorabialski also wrote, shot, edited and scored the film himself. Wasikowska delivers a performance that captures artistic uncertainty through halting movement and tentative delivery.
