COSMOS

"It's often hilarious, confounding and downright strange … delivers a demented philosophical puzzle that's fun to scrutinize in all of its baffling uncertainties." – Indiewire

A triumphant return that would become a farewell, Cosmos is both the first film in 15 years and the bittersweet swansong for singular auteur Andrzej Żuławski (Possession, That Most Important Thing: Love), the widely admired Polish director who passed away in February.

Adapting Witold Gombrowicz's surreal mystery novel about two desultory young men visiting a creepy guesthouse, the master filmmaker eschews some of his trademark hysterical delirium for a drier, absurdist-literary intensity, yet the overall effect – existential turbulence, emotional tension, lurid imagery – is pure Å»uÅ‚awski.

It's an arrestingly strange work that suggests spiritual kinship with Buñuel, Lynch and Rivette, and it won Å»uÅ‚awski the prestigious Best Director award at the Locarno Film Festival.

"Å»uÅ‚awski's film is all rhyme and poetry and the pleasure of nonsense." – Senses of Cinema