Set in post-Brexit London and framed as the debut documentary of an American filmmaker named Katie (Emma Friedman-Cohen), this bold experiment turns its faux-factual setup into a web of competing goals and ethically suspect behaviors. Katie, needing a vulnerable subject (“Someone hurt,” she explains), chooses Alicja (a fearless, haunting performance by Aneta Piotrowska). An aspiring and troubled Polish actress, Alicja is lonely and charismatic, estranged from her family and struggling to connect with someone beyond her many Facebook friends. Yet as Katie shadows Alicja around her neighborhood and to auditions, their relationship takes on a darkly controlling hue.

Shot mostly in black and white and with an improvisational feel, “My Friend the Polish Girl” is cool and clever, feigning social realism with winking calculation. Casting two leads with physical similarities, then giving them common psychological sore spots, adds disturbing layers of emotional complexity. Whether provoking Alicja’s highly sexualized behavior or facilitating her career, Katie is slowly nudging her film from a study of exploitation to an example of the same.