Making ballet movies isn’t for sissies. Especially Russian ballet movies. That’s what James Napier Robertson found on Joika, the director’s first foreign foray after his three New Zealand features, which included 2014’s great The Dark Horse.
His new film, the first NZ-Poland co-production, was mostly filmed in Warsaw but assembled here. It’s the true-life story of American ballerina Joy Womack, who, as a gifted teenage dancer, arrived in Moscow as an unwelcome outsider in the world of Russian ballet. The film stars Diane Kruger as her ballet mistress at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. It’s a riveting, visually spectacular drama that isn’t just for
