The 2020 Netflix film based on this Polish hit by Kata Wéber and directed – like the play – by her husband, Kornél Mundruczó, shockingly opened with a 23-minute single shot sequence of a home birth that goes disastrously wrong. It won an Oscar nomination for Vanessa Kirby as the traumatised mother.
Here the sequence is projected on to a screen behind which three actors and a camera operator enact it live. Justyna Wasilewska’s Maja labours away, screaming in and out of focus like the victim in an amateur horror flick, while her clownishly incompetent husband (Dobromir Dymecki) pops out front every now and then for a stressy cigarette break or a frantic attempt to get a phone signal to call an ambulance.
