The premiere will be held in Bologna on June 13th at 9:15 PM at the Cinema Lumière – Scorsese Room.
The last master of Paratheatre returns to PolandEwa Benesz's journey through memory, gesture, and ritual in Federico Savonitto and Andrea Mura's documentary, competing at the 2025 Biografilm Festival.
Actress, director, pedagogue, Ewa Benesz she is one of the last living witnesses and interpreters of the Teatr Laboratorium experience of Jerzy Grotowski, among the few direct students to have continued, for decades, the path of the Paratheatre. After fleeing Poland during the martial law of the 1980s, she settled in Italy, where for over forty years she continued her work on the actor, attracting students from all over Europe and beyond.
Custodian of a radical theatrical knowledge founded on direct experience, on the body, relationships and ritual, today, on the threshold of her 80th birthday, Ewa is preparing to make a profound and irreversible choice: to interrupt his work, to take leave of his students and leave his home in the Sardinian countryside to return to his homeland, Poland, in Lublin, closing a cycle of experiences that deeply affected those who had the privilege of working with her.
The documentary “Ewa – The Last Lesson” (Italy, Poland 2025, 67'), directed by Federico Savonitto and Andrea Mura, tells this moment of transition: Ewa Benesz's last lesson and the decision to conclude a pedagogical and artistic activity that, in sixty years of performance practice, has involved hundreds of people around the world. It will be previewed at Biografilm Festival 2025 of Bologna, in the Italian Competition, the June 13th at 9.15pm, at the Cinema Lumière, Sala Scorsese.
Co-produced by in association with La Bandita and Takaità Film, the documentary was made with the support of the Sicilian Region, the Sicilia Film Commission, the Fondazione di Sardegna, the Municipality of Cagliari, and the Sardegna Film Commission, in collaboration with Società Umanitaria – Cineteca Sarda, the Grotowski Institute, and the Sole Luna Association – A Bridge Between Cultures. The film was edited by Jacopo Quadri and Nicolò Tettamanti.
To transmit knowledge that cannot be written
Ewa – The Last Lesson is the result of over fifteen years of collaboration between the directors and Ewa Benesz. The narrative is nourished by the materials and visions that have informed her work: ancient myths, Indian spirituality, African rhythms, shamanic practices, and the teachings of Gurdjieff, but above all a conception of theater as an ancient and fundamental instrument conveyed through a single drama, the drama of our existence, which helps us find the path to the source of who we are.
The film also tells the story of Ewa's work in the wake of the Paratheatre, a form of research developed by Grotowski in the 1970s and carried forward by her in a personal and coherent manner. Paratheatre does not involve spectators: it is a collectively lived experience, in which the action takes place in its natural setting – a road, a house, a wood, a meadow – and the theatrical act frees itself from representation to become an authentic, lived, necessary experience. The gap between actor and audience disappears: everyone is a participant, immersed in a transformative process, both physical and spiritual.
The final lesson: a journey through places, gestures, and encounters
On the verge of eighty, Ewa writes her memoirs while continuing to travel to carry out her particular work. We see her in the prologue of the film at Brzezinka, the place where Grotowski created the Paratheatre, to then move away and reach the Suor Orsola Benincasa University of Naples, where he moves the students' chairs to replace them with a bamboo cane structure, and the Circolo Arci Tavola Tonda of Palermo, where he manages to unlock the emotions of his students with teachings transmitted through example and words.
He will then arrive at the laboratory house Cenci in Amelia in Umbria, a secluded and magical place where the pedagogue Franco Lorenzoni hosted Grotowski fleeing Polish martial law like Ewa herself.
Finally the place that has been his base for the last thirty years, is a large house at the foot of Mount Porceddus, in the heart of the Sardinia, where she realized the dream of a "poor" life as advocated by her mentor Grotowski, living without electricity and comforts. Now she is leaving this place, some of her students come to visit her one by one to gain final lessons in preparation for the imminent move. Even the transfer of Ewa's beloved objects becomes an opportunity to reflect on our earthly passage: the transporter is a Ukrainian boy who fled the war in Poland, who finds himself reflecting with Ewa on the contingencies that lead one to abandon one's country at any moment, without knowing when one will be able to return.
