The film is a modern interpretation of the 1960s cult classic Au Hasard Balthazar (Balthazar, at Random) by Robert Bresson, which follows a donkey as he changes owners, most of whom treat him badly.
The journey of the donkey in Skolimowski's movie begins in a Polish circus and ends in an Italian slaughterhouse.
The film is described by its co-producer, the Warmia-Masuria Film Fund, as “a bitter but also warmly humanist paraphrase of a ‘road movie’; a panopticon of human behaviour towards a defenceless animal, a suggestive picture of social relations and cultural changes taking place in the modern world.”
EO, based on a script by Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska, is a Polish-Italian co-production. It had its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Festival, winning the Grand Jury Prize.
It is one of thirty films on the longlist for the 2022 European Film Awards.
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Click on the audio player above to listen to a report by Elżbieta Krajewska.