Rising Polish actress Michalina Olszańska puts in an astonishing, Czech Lion-winning performance as Olga Hepnarová, the last woman executed in Czechoslovakia, in this gripping true crime story – less a film “about” a notorious mass murderer and more a claustrophobic existential drama.

Olga is a downtrodden, young queer woman in the dreary, austere Prague of the early ‘70s whose coming of age only reinforces her sense of alienation from a society she feels sees her as a “Prügelknabe” – someone who exists simply to be trampled all over.

Olszańska appears in almost every shot, all of them rendered in beautiful black-and-white by renowned Polish cinematographer Adam Sikora, in a film which has drawn comparisons with the work of masters like Robert Bresson and Carl Dreyer.