EO

West Coast Premiere


LAUGH | WORLD

Poland, Italy 2022, 86 min, Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

Revered Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski creates a new way of seeing the world in a film that chronicles nature’s beauty alongside human kindness and cruelty, from a donkey’s point of view. While comparisons are inevitable to Robert Bresson’s conceptually similar 1966 masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar, this extraordinary tale is its own beguiling beast, playing with color and sound to render our silent protagonist’s journey across Poland and Italy an entrancing, hyper-vivid odyssey. Recent documentaries such as Gunda and Cow have sought to illuminate the lives of animals without resorting to cloying anthropomorphism, and EO, the winner of this year’s Cannes Jury Prize, takes this approach to the next level. Through this donkey’s expressive eyes, and its alternately hypnotic, whimsical, and disturbing adventures, the film illustrates how mad and magical everyday life can be—and that’s before Isabelle Huppert shows up near the end for a riveting, scene-stealing cameo. —Tim Grierson

In Polish, Italian, English, and French with English subtitles


Showtimes

In-Person

2:00 PM — Rafael 1

2:00 PM — Sequoia 1

Director

Writer, director, and actor Jerzy Skolimowski was born in Łódź, Poland, and attended that city’s National Film School. His fourth feature, THE DEPARTURE (1967), won the Golden Bear and UNICRIT Award at the Berlin International Film Festival. Among his films are DEEP END (1970); THE SHOUT (1978), winner of Cannes’ Grand Prize of the Jury; MOONLIGHTING (1982), for which Skolimowski won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes; THE LIGHTSHIP (1985), winner of special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival; FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA (2008), winner of Best Director at the Polish Film Awards; and ESSENTIAL KILLING (2010), winner of four Polish Film Awards, including Best Director and Best Film. He received a Venice Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2016 Venice Film Festival.

Film Info

countries:

Italy
|
Poland

Year:

2022

Running Time:

86

Languages:

Polish, Italian, English, French

Director:

Jerzy Skolimowski

Producers:

Ewa Piaskowska, Jerzy Skolimowski

Cinematographers:

Michał Dymek

Editors:

Agnieszka Glińsk

Writers:

Ewa Piaskowska, Jerzy Skolimowski

Cast:

Sandra Drzymalska, Lorenzo Zurzolo, Mateusz Kościukiewicz, Isabelle Huppert

sections:

WORLD CINEMA

Subtitles:

English

venues:

Rafael 1
|
Sequoia 1