EO

Viewer Advice: Includes themes such as animal mistreatment that some may find distressing. Viewer discretion is recommended. 

Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize, legendary Polish new wave director Jerzy Skolimowski’s late-career oddity is an unforgettably surreal riff on Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (MIFF 1967) – told from the donkey’s perspective.

This picaresque winter’s tale follows Eo, a gentle grey donkey who’s freed from a Polish circus. After unexpectedly becoming a fan of a local soccer team – as many a hoofed mammal does – he embarks on an adventure across the country, during which he encounters all the wonders and many indignities of life, including a wolf cull filmed like an EDM rave and a chance meeting with Isabelle Huppert.

Returning to the cinematic, er, bray for the first time in seven years, the 84-year-old Polish director of 11 Minutes (MIFF 2015), Essential Killing (MIFF 2011) and Deep End (MIFF 1971) proves that his singularly eccentric gifts have only become more fascinating with time. With EO, he crafts a sublime, surrealist portrait of earthly kinship that touches on animal rights, equine dreams and European existentialism – albeit from a decidedly non-human perspective. Plus: donkey-vision!

“Beautifully photographed, sentimental and surreal in equal measure; and also stubborn – as stubborn as its hero – in its symbolism and stark pessimism.” – The Guardian