eo movie review new yorker

Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO,” about a donkey wandering through modern Poland, is a rare animal picture that’s not aimed at kids. In fact, small children, particularly ones conditioned by post-1950s Disney cartoons about lovable creatures, should not be allowed anywhere near it, because the movie doesn’t stint on presentations of the cruelty and brutality that animals suffer in a world of humans, and that humans inflict on each other. This is not a case like “ Babe ” or the recent “ Okja ” where hard-edged presentations of human foibles and destructive actions alternate with heartwarming depictions of goodhearted folks trying their best to protect the creatures they love and respect. There are very few people in this film who even seem to notice animals—and when they do, it sometimes leads to the worst kind of attention. 

Like Robert Bresson’s 1966 donkey-centric parable “ Au Hasard Balthazar “— which provided the storytelling template for many other ambitious dramas such as “ The Bear ” and “ War Horse ” that focus on animals who are just animals, and don’t talk or sing or otherwise attempt to entertain us—this one has the feeling of a pre-20th century fairy tale. The main goal is to create a fable that reminds the viewer of humans’ connections to the natural world and serves up situations that have metaphorical dimensions beyond any physical actions that happen to be taking place at that moment.

The title character is grey with white flecks in his fur. We don’t know his age or prior history. We first meet him in the opening credits sequence which, like so many parts of this film, is lit in expressionistic colors (red in this case) that verge on nightmarish or lurid. EO is in the center ring at a circus. His sweet and doting trainer Kasandra ( Sandra Drzymalska ) leads him through the tricks she’s trained him to do. Then EO is separated from Kasandra when the circus is dismantled following a bankruptcy notice at the same time that animal rights activists are protesting the show for animal cruelty. 

And the odyssey begins. There are times when the framing of the tale suggests that we’re watching a shaggier version of one of those family-friendly animal pictures where a heroic creature, usually a dog, is separated from its owner and travels hundreds of miles to reunite, surviving a series of mini-adventures through sheer ingenuity. That’s not where Skolimowski and his co-writer  Ewa Piaskowska are taking us. This isn’t even a picaresque narrative that puts EO at the center of every scene. Sometimes he’s not onscreen and the movie shows us the geography of Poland and the way that humans and their buildings and roads and cars have claimed and in some cases disfigured it, while remaining largely indifferent to the natural world they’ve trampled and the animals they’ve tamed, displaced or destroyed. (A section featuring the great Isabelle Huppert could have been enlarged into its own movie; Huppert, like Marlon Brando before her, has otherworldly energy that makes it seem as if she sees more than we ever could.)

EO is small and typical—the kind of animal who seems beautiful after you get to know him, but who might not stand out in a stable full of donkeys. He could have been the model for the wisecracker in the “ Shrek ” movies. When Skolimowski and cinematographer Michal Dymek  photograph him in tight close-ups—sometimes so tight that the squarish, old-movie frame can barely contain the graceful line of EO’s head in profile, one eye looming dead-center—you get a glimmer of what could possibly be wisdom. But that’s just you the viewer projecting, in the way you might while visiting a farm or zoo. 

The filmmakers are resolute in keeping EO mysterious and letting him be an animal. We don’t really know why he does or does not do things at any moment. Even when his trainer finds and briefly consoles him and then leaves him and he seems to go after her, there’s no indication of what EO expects or hopes to achieve, much less his likelihood of success. He travels a ways and then stops, and more things happen.

But there’s not always a discernible internal logic to the scenes and set pieces, and that can make parts of “EO” feel less like a coherent, if stripped-down, narrative than a highlight reel of clever cinematography techniques, including ostentatious acrobatic drone shots soaring high over the countryside, single-color filters (evocative of the final section of “2001: A Space Odyssey”) and first-person “trick shots” where cameras have been attached to machines and other objects in motion. Some of these images are genuinely beautiful, eerie even. But others (including an early, brief sequence in a stable) veer towards fashion-magazine slick prettiness. And there are times when the film gets fixated on bold colors and striking angles (such as a very low-angled shot of a robot “dog” trundling through grass and across puddly dirt roads) to the detriment or neglect of EO. It’s not enough to entirely derail the movie, but one might wish for a bit more aesthetic clarity from time to time.

One of the most upsetting sequences in the film finds EO chewing grass outside of a nightclub somewhere in the countryside when thugs with baseball bats pull up in cars, invade the club, beat and frighten the patrons, then barge back outside to drive away into the night. Somebody in one of the cars notices EO at the edge of the lot, and they all climb back out of the car and beat him, too, with the camera simulating EO’s first-person perspective as the blows rain down on him. Why didn’t EO run the second the cars pulled up and the men got out screaming with rage? This and other moments make it feel as if the potential for dramatic power overruled practical or logical considerations.

But such lapses are rare. For the most part, you feel as if you’re in sure hands and can see what the storytellers are trying to do. It’s as much an anthropological pseudo-documentary as it is a drama, one that sometimes evokes the Terrence Malick philosophy of “ The Thin Red Line ,” which began by insisting that humans are a part of nature and that when humans war with other humans, it is nature warring with itself. 

This is not the kind of movie that tries to convince viewers that animals are “just like us,” even though quite a few scenes depict humans confirming that they, too, are animals, by intimidating and terrorizing individuals and groups in order to assert dominance or claim territory. At least EO escaped the circus. Humans built it and are the main attractions as well as the audience, and don’t realize that they’re running through the same routines, day after day. 

Now playing in select theaters. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

• Sandra Drzymalska as Kasandra
• Isabelle Huppert as The Countess
• Lorenzo Zurzolo as Vito
• Mateusz Kościukiewicz as Mateo
• Tomasz Organek as Ziom
• Lolita Chammah as Dora
• Agata Sasinowska as Kaja
• Anna Rokita as Dorota
• Agnieszka Glińska
• Ewa Piaskowska
• Jerzy Skolimowski

Cinematographer

• Michal Dymek
• Pawel Mykietyn

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This brash film about a wandering donkey may just leave you in tears

John Powers

The donkey's eyes seem to take the measure of modern life in Jerzy Skolimowski's film, EO . Festival de Cannes hide caption

The donkey's eyes seem to take the measure of modern life in Jerzy Skolimowski's film, EO .

We all have things we don't like in movies. For some it's horror, for others bloodshed, for still others, nudity and sex. For my part, I've always found it excruciating to watch a film in which animals are shown being abused.

I was filled with dread at the prospect of seeing the new film EO , which is a riff on Robert Bresson's Au Hasard, Balthazar , a painful masterpiece in which a donkey is ground to dust by the world's inhumanity. But I knew I had to see it because it was made by one of my cinematic heroes, the Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, who at age 84 is enjoying an astonishing late career resurgence. So I dragged myself off to a screening. And I'm glad I did. Far from being a cavalcade of misery, EO is a thrillingly imaginative piece of filmmaking: a strange, haunting epic about a donkey that couldn't feel more of our moment.

The donkey's name is EO, and as the action begins, EO is part of a small circus act with a loving young woman trainer. But when the circus goes broke, EO is sold off to farmers. They don't treat EO badly but the donkey remembers a happier, earlier life and soon escapes, beginning a journey across modern Europe that carries EO from forests and towns, to villas and scrap heaps the size of small Alps.

Now, normally a film like this would focus on the mean people who surround EO's wanderings. But the people here aren't all bad. Along the way, EO encounters all manner of human beings from the kind to the heartlessly brutal. Yet in a bold move, Skolimowski doesn't give precedence to the human side of things. He stays centered on his donkey hero, giving EO's existence an independence and worth equal to any of the humans we meet. We come to know the world from EO's point of view — the film's alien beauty suggests an animal's perceptions — and we share the donkey's emotions.

Skolimowski constantly shows us EO's dark eyes, which seem to take the measure of modern life. What they're witnessing and judging is our world with its rampant despoiling of nature, and in particular, its treatment of animals — from the looming wind turbines that slaughter birds in flight, to hunters with laser-guided rifles gunning down wolves, to the industrial food system that endlessly drives animals into the meatpacking plant. We spend the film fearing what may befall EO.

Now, a sense of the cosmos being out to get you has been present in Skolimowski's work since the beginning. Not surprisingly, perhaps, as his father was executed by the Nazis and he himself grew up in the repressiveness of Communist Poland. A man of many gifts — he's also been a boxer, a poet, a painter and an actor, even in Marvel Movies! — Skolimowski enjoyed a terrific run from the 1960s to the 1980s, making great movies like Barrier , Deep End and Moonlighting . Then in his mid-40s, he seemed to go cinematically fallow. What nobody could have guessed was that, in his eighth decade, he'd catch fire again, turning out films like Essential Killing and 11 Minutes that crackle with Young Punk audacity.

This panache is on display everywhere in EO , with its onrushing camera, color filters, aggressive music and utter confidence about throwing viewers into the donkey world where there's more poetry than plot and nobody explains what's going on. The film is so brash, freewheeling and inventive that, if I didn't know Skolimowski had made it, I'd have assumed it was the work of a brilliant 25 year old discovering what they — and the movies — can do.

Part of what makes EO feel so alive is that it speaks to today's huge, ongoing shift in consciousness about animals and our increasing awareness that we treat them horribly. This is a film filled with compassion for the exploited, ill-treated creatures of this world and electric with anger at those who, through malice or thoughtlessness, perpetuate cruelty toward the powerless.

Jean-Luc Godard famously said that Bresson's donkey film gave you "the world in an hour and a half." You can say the same of Skolimowski's revamped version, which may be another way of telling you that this is a movie that may leave you in tears.

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"EO" is the gorgeously hypnotic drama about a donkey whose journey will break your heart

Cannes film festival jury prize winner and poland's official oscar entry, "eo" reflects our own humanity, by gary m. kramer.

Gorgeously filmed, experimental in style, and incredibly humanistic, "EO," recounts the experiences of the titular donkey — frequently from the animal's point of view. The film is Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski's (" Four Nights With Anna ") homage to Robert Bresson 's "Au Hasard Balthazar," and it arrives with bona fides, having won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and is Poland's selection as their official Oscar entry for Best International Film. 

EO is first seen under a red strobe light with surging music. He is a circus animal who is cared for by Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska) who is part of the Cyrk Orion. She feeds EO and gives him affection, and the donkey is wonderfully expressive even as the camera follows him trotting along. But protesters against animal abuse in the circus cause EO to be "repossessed" and taken from Kasandra. Viewers can see the sadness in his eyes. 

The film then shows all the different experiences EO has on his own as he moves through the Polish countryside. The story is, of course, a metaphor with EO as the innocent who encounters all kinds of people. One could liken the animal to an immigrant who is forced to work — EO is seen hitched to a cart in his early scenes — or a symbol for Poland and how people in the country treat him, kindly and cruelly. There are children who pet him and ride him and others who exploit him. In one adorable moment, he munches on a carrot tied around his neck. There are folks who are gentle, such as Kasandra, who locates him in one charming scene and feeds him a muffin for his birthday. His braying when she leaves him is heartbreaking. 

There are many striking scenes of EO on his own. He watches horses run free from the captivity of a trailer. One marvelous sequence has EO out in nature at night, and he sees frogs in the water, a spider in its web, an owl on a tree branch, a howling wolf and a racoon scurrying before lasers and gunshots spoil nature's tranquility. There is also a fabulous drone shot through a forest and along a river that is scored to Pawel Mykietyn's sonorous music. Even a tracking shot of EO trotting through a lighted tunnel is mesmerizing. (Michal Dymek did the exquisite cinematography.) And a breathtaking landscape is shrewdly seen in widescreen at first but later from between the slats that are penning EO in on a truck. (Freedom/captivity is a strong theme here.)

But as the film progresses, it has EO interacting with people. When he is near a soccer pitch, EO has an impact on a game during a penalty kick. He is taken to the afterparty by the winning team, and has smoke blown in his face. He is a passive participant as windows are broken but EO is beaten by hooligans. There are questions raised about his suffering as he is passed around and EO ends up on a farm where foxes are killed for their fur. His actions there include kicking a violent man, which should make audiences cheer. 

"EO" does abruptly shift its storylines, which can be disconcerting, and his character can be in the background for some of the drama. One of the more interesting sequences has EO being transported by Mateo (Mateusz Kosciukiewicz) a trucker. EO is not in the frame when Mateo cleans himself up in a rest stop washroom or offers to help someone, nor does the animal see the shocking act of violence that occurs as this scene unfolds, but the film suggests EO senses it. (Viewers will feel it too.) 

Likewise, when a young man, Vito (Lorenzo Zurzolo) encounters EO, he wonders if he is saving the donkey or stealing him. As he returns home to his Italian villa, he has a tense exchange with The Countess ( Isabelle Huppert ) that involves her breaking plates and tossing handfuls of silverware around in a scene full of drama. Again, it seems a bit far afield from EO's story, but it is fascinating, and Huppert is dazzling in her cameo. 

One sequence, around the film's midpoint, features a robotic animal , which perhaps only emphasizes the beauty of EO, a real one, but an earlier scene of a horse being tenderly washed and groomed while EO watches, jealously, conveys his alienation more effectively. 

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Such is the film's narrative logic, and perhaps it is best to just let the film wash across the screen, not unlike a hypnotic series of slow-motion scenes of water near the film's end. Viewers can make connections or interpret people, or actions, or emotions as desired. EO is not going to judge, but he is going to tell you what to think or feel, which is perhaps the beauty and brilliance of this uncommon film.

"EO" opens in New York City Nov. 18 with a platform release to follow.

movie reviews by Gary Kramer

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Gary M. Kramer is a writer and film critic based in Philadelphia. Follow him on Twitter .

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Review: ‘EO,’ a gorgeous portrait of a donkey, is the movie you’ve been braying for

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In one of the most astonishing sequences in “EO,” a rapturous hymn to the natural world from the 84-year-old Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, a wandering donkey gets lost in a forest primeval. Night has fallen, but pools of moonlight illuminate this hushed, dark world in all its living glory. A little frog skims along the surface of a rushing stream. A skittering spider spins its web. An owl frowns down at the donkey from its treetop perch, as though registering an intruder’s presence. There are also a couple of howling wolves, a wary red fox and, in time, an array of green laser beams announcing the presence of nearby hunters, whose gunshots shatter the serenity of this woodland idyll.

The entire sequence tells much of the movie’s story in miniature. Again and again this donkey, known as EO (an approximation of the sound he makes), will experience a moment of freedom, only for a few human beings to come along and drag him back into harm’s way. If that risks making “EO” sound like a compendium of cruelty, rest assured that it isn’t, though it may speak to Skolimowski’s decades-long affinity for underdogs in movies like “Le Départ” (1967) and “Essential Killing” (2010). He knows that humans can be kind, but also that they can be abusive, with their often callous indifference to the rights and welfare of other creatures. The beauty that Skolimowski and the cinematographer Michal Dymek show us in “EO” — and shot for shot, this could be the year’s most breathtakingly beautiful movie — isn’t a denial of that cruelty, but a response to it.

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It begins with a screen-flooding burst of red light and a thunderous passage from Pawel Mykietyn’s orchestral score, which pulses and surges hypnotically throughout. In this early moment, EO is part of a circus act with a young performer, Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska), who coos to him, caresses his coat and gives him carrot muffins to eat. Kasandra becomes the love of his life, the human he dreams about and longs for after they’re separated and he is shipped off to his next home. But that’s as far as Skolimowski goes in imputing motives or desires to EO, apart from the basic compulsions to eat, rest and roam. As the director seems to signal with regular closeups of EO’s enormous eyes — they’re somehow both inscrutable and soulfully expressive — there are limits to how much we can enter into, or even imagine, a donkey’s inner life.

Others, however, are happy to speak on his behalf: “Can’t you see this animal suffers?” an activist yells during a protest that will cause the circus to disband and send EO and his fellow four-legged performers running in all directions. The rest of this swift and relentless 86-minute movie (which Skolimowski scripted with his wife, Ewa Piaskowska) follows the donkey on a zig-zagging trek across Poland to Italy, over rolling hills and man-made bridges, through tunnels and past wind turbines and into that enchanted forest. At one point, in a shot so serendipitous it feels almost supernatural, a herd of galloping horses materializes alongside EO’s transport vehicle, their exhilarating freedom throwing his confinement into painful relief.

Along the way there are brief stops at a newly opened barn, where EO is sweetly nuzzled (but also frightened) by majestic horses, and a raucous sporting event where he becomes a grievously abused mascot for the winning team. From there he’s brought to a large facility where, by some whim of human mercy, he’s nursed back to health rather than put down. (Some of his neighbors aren’t so lucky.) From there he will ride along with a couple of drifters and eventually make his way to an Italian villa, where a countess played by none other than Isabelle Huppert breaks a few dishes and glares seductively at a hunky priest (Lorenzo Zurzolo). Huppert also becomes, I think, a kind of emblem of the larger European art-house cinema in whose domineering shadow this brilliant movie and its lowly, animalist (as opposed to lofty, humanist) concerns take root.

Which is not to suggest that “EO,” which shared the third-place jury prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, has gone unnoticed or unrecognized, though it could easily get lost at the few American theaters where it will be shown, as it should be, on the big screen. When I first saw “EO” at Cannes, it was spoken of, sometimes dismissively, as more or less a contemporary remake of “Au Hasard Balthazar,” Robert Bresson’s 1966 masterpiece about the life, death and extraordinary beauty of a donkey much like this one. Both Balthazar and EO love and are loved by a human, and both are forced to become beasts of burden. Both also bear deadpan witness to all manner of human awfulness and absurdity.

Skolimowski, for his part, has acknowledged “Au Hasard Balthazar” as both an inspiration and a point of departure. While both films share a clear empathy for their protagonists, their visual and rhythmic differences are no less obvious. Bresson’s stately black-and-white compositions and gently flowing dissolves are a far cry from Agnieszka Glinska’s jagged edits and Dymek’s sweeping, vibrant-hued camerawork, especially those angry shocks of red. (The boldness of the imagery speaks to Skolimowski’s background as a painter.) And while Bresson folded an intricate human drama into the background of “Balthazar,” the humans in “EO” are interesting but comparatively interstitial figures. Their problems and sufferings — one weeps, another dies — concern us only to the degree that they impact EO.

EO himself is played by six donkeys — their names are Hola, Tako, Marietta, Ettore, Rocco and Mela — who are fused, through seamless shooting and editing, into a character we come to know and love. The intimacy of the camerawork — the loving close-quarters attention it showers on EO with his sometimes downcast, sometimes excited gaze, his perked-up ears, his soft gray fur and the scrumptious string of carrots that at one point adorns his neck — itself feels like an expression of that love. Skolimowski isn’t really trying to convey EO’s perspective, aside from a few shots that suggest a donkey’s-eye view, with their low-to-the-ground angles and blurred edges. He seems more interested in capturing a sense of what it means to be in EO’s presence, bringing you close enough that you feel you could talk to him, breathe in his scent and run your fingers through his fur.

In “EO,” the camera doesn’t just follow the story or record the action. Its restless, exploratory movements express a kind of shared consciousness, a spirit of communion among different members of the animal world, whether they’re running together in a field or sharing the same tight enclosure. It’s the grace of this movie to extend that communion to the human beings who pass in front of the camera, and whose fates are tightly bound up with EO’s, whether they realize it or not. And finally, that communion is extended to the audience, and especially to those of us who go to the movies to be jolted, moved and have our sense of the universe shaken up or gently realigned. The world we share with EO is cold and cruel, which doesn’t mean we have to be.

In Polish and Italian with English subtitles Not rated Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 2 at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, downtown Los Angeles

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‘eo’: film review | cannes 2022.

Veteran Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski ('Deep End') returns to the Croisette with his latest feature, which follows the turbulent adventures of a mule in Poland and Italy.

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

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Does the cinema have room for two art-house donkey movies in its repertoire?

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition) Cast: Sandra Dryzmalska, Isabelle Huppert, Lorenzo Zurzulo, Mateusz Koscieukiewicz Director: Jerzy Skolimowski Screenwriters: Jerzy Skolimowski, Ewa Paiskowska

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And yet, despite a shred of story that’s told episodically, EO , which clocks in at a concise 86 minutes, can be an engrossing experience. This is in a large part due to the stunning, immersive photography of Mychal Dymek (with additional footage by Pawel Edelman and Michal Englert), whose camera swoops up to the sky via drones to capture the shifting European landscapes, or gets up close and personal with our titular hero (or heroine?), using what’s best described as a subjective “donkey-cam.” If there are some movies that play better on a big screen in a dark theatre with the sound turned up, this is one of them.

Skolimowski has a long, diverse filmography ( Walkover , The Shout , Deep End , Moonlighting and many others) and has always dabbled in experimentation, but perhaps never quite so much as this time. Working with co-writer and producer Ewa Paiskowska, he eschews a conventional plot to make something that sits between fiction and non-fiction, nature documentary and avant-garde mood piece. If there’s any message behind EO , it’s that animals — donkeys especially — are still treated with plenty of brutality, whereas they are what manage to make our world such a beautiful place.

In that opening, Skolimowski seems to be underlining to what extent humans can never fully know what’s best for animals, even if they think they do. It’s a motif present throughout the film as EO is passed from one set of hands to another, all the while longing to be reunited with Kasandra. (This seems like a direct reference to the Bresson film, where Balthazar’s life was never better than when he was cared for at the beginning by the young Marie.)

The donkey’s existence has a few highs, such as when he’s transferred to a petting zoo and becomes the object of affection for a class of schoolchildren with mental disabilities, and lots of lows, like when he’s neglected on the farm in favor of all the stately groomed horses (one of whom serves as a fashion model) or nearly hunted down in the woods at night.

Both moods are combined in what’s perhaps the film’s longest vignette, when EO shows up at a regional Polish soccer game and winds up playing a hand in the local team’s victory. After, they bring him to a bar to celebrate, only to be attacked by hooligans from the other team who beat up not only all the fans and players, but EO as well.

It’s all very easy on the eyes, even if EO’s life is rarely easy and doesn’t come to an easy end. Without giving away the finale, let’s just say that it explores the quotidian savagery animals are still subjected to, in a scene reminiscent of similar ones in Bong Joon-ho’s Okja and Andrea Arnold’s Cow , both of which played Cannes as well.

Before that ending happens, another Cannes regular appears in the form of Isabelle Huppert, who makes a brief cameo in a sequence that seems like it was ripped out of another movie — some sort of Franco-Italian family drama involving a villa, a countess and a priest — and tossed in here for the sake of it. It doesn’t really amount to much, but it reveals to what extent Skolimowski is willing to try out anything in this latest effort — the work of an 84-year-old filmmaker as independent as the beast he wants to set free.

Full credits

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Competition) Production companies: Skopia Film, Alien Films Cast: Sandra Dryzmalska, Isabelle Huppert, Lorenzo Zurzulo, Mateusz Koscieukiewicz Director: Jerzy Skolimowski Screenwriters, producers: Jerzy Skolimowski, Ewa Paiskowska Executive producer: Jeremy Thomas Director of photography: Mychal Dymek Editor: Agnieszka Glinska Composer: Pawel Mykietyn Additional photography: Pawel Edelman, Michal Englert Sales: Hanway Films In Polish, Italian, English, French

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‘EO’ Review: Polish Legend Jerzy Skolimowski Returns with Madcap Bresson Remake

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Cannes  Film Festival. Sideshow releases the film in select theaters on Friday, November 18.

One of many good things to be said about “ EO ,” surely the wackiest movie in competition at Cannes this year, is that you would have no idea it was made by an 84-year-old filmmaker in only his fourth movie since the fall of the Soviet Union. A master of the aesthetically liberated New Polish Cinema — fellow alum include Krzysztof Kieślowski, Agnieszka Holland, and Krzysztof Zanussi —  Jerzy Skolimowski last won plaudits on the Croisette in the late ’70s and early ’80s for a string of British-made dramas starring the likes of John Hurt and Jeremy Irons. Horror film “The Shout,” with Alan Bates, took the Grand Prix jury prize in 1978. “Moonlighting,” in 1982, won best screenplay here. New York Times critic Vincent Canby called it “one of the best films ever made about exile.”

“EO” is not like any of those, even if it does have something to say about exile.

Told through the eyes of a modest donkey — often literally — Skolimowski’s madcap, visually experimental “remake” of Robert Bresson’s 1966 black-and-white drama “Au Hasard Balthazar” has plenty of nods to his compatriot classmates and little to do with Skolimowski’s previous films. The titular donkey, onomatopoeically named (it is “Hi-Han” in France), is freed from a circus in central Poland and briefly becomes a hardcore “ultra” fan at a local soccer team, before being whisked away for more adventures, taking in the vastness of life along the way. Eo even meets Isabelle Huppert, a privilege any living being can look back on their years proudly for. (In Cannes’s answer to a Marvel cameo, the gasp Huppert’s appearance produced at last night’s press screening is one for the ages.)

The fact that Eo has no control over his destiny — our narrator, remember, is a literal donkey — makes for a somewhat anarchic viewing experience. There aren’t a series of human conversations to grab on to. There is seemingly no plot. In Bresson’s version, it’s the humans around the donkey who are the true center of the story. Not so in “EO.”This is Donkeyvision, and we’re better off for it.

Still, there are some welcome glimpses at the formative and underrated era in Polish cinema which produced Skolimowski et al. Local officials cutting a ribbon at a new farm warehouse are inept and inane, much like the Communist leaders of Kieślowski and Andrzej Wajda’s films. One image that sticks out is of a priest blessing the new facility. To say that many Polish films about the not-so-glorious opening of a new factory featured the same trope would be an understatement. Communism in Poland may be gone, but the country’s caustic wit, and the New Polish Cinema’s distrust of an all-seeing Catholic Church, remain.

That’s not to say “EO” is much of a throwback, though, and the extent to which it isn’t  one is refreshing. There are some audacious visual tricks, notably the truly insane portrayal of Eo’s dreams — yes — and the donkey’s experience of circus performing, with drone footage to make Michael Bay jealous. The Łódź Film School tradition which Skolimowski was educated is known above all else for its innovations in photography. If the Italian Neo-Realists are documentarians and Britain’s kitchen sink filmmakers were social activists, those who came through Łódź with Skolimowski are technicians. “EO” shows that his skill, here, has not aged a day. (The fact Skolimowski has co-written the new Polanski, however, very much has.)

Clocking in at less than 90 minutes — other Competition titles so far have been more than a tad longer — “EO” is probably too slight and eccentric to be a Palme contender. That’s a shame, as it’s unlike anything else in the Cannes lineup.

Most likely, it found its place in Competition this year out of affinity for Skolimowski’s earlier work, and its relation to Bresson. Nevermind that they have entirely different ideological perspectives: Bresson’s is an almost spiritual tribute to the very nature of victimhood, with shades of Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot.” Like much of the French New Wave icon’s work, each and every shot is placed with intention. “EO,” however, is more interested in telling a meandering tale about a donkey traipsing through contemporary Europe, in all its strangeness and savagery.

The most fleshed out human role is Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska), Eo’s circus performer companion. It’s through her eyes that we see the sheer beauty of the animal — not everyone sees Eo this way — in a similar fashion that we perceive the beauty of Eve the cow in “First Cow” through the eyes of Cookie. After that, however, the human gaze takes a backseat.

Ingmar Bergman said after watching Bresson’s film: “A donkey, to me, is completely uninteresting, but a human being is always interesting.” By focusing almost entirely on his donkey, Skolimowski takes the unenviable task of challenging Bergman head-on — and, it seems, proves him wrong.

“EO” premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. 

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‘EO’ Review: ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’ Homage Is a Case of Been There, Donkey That

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Give an animal a name, and it becomes a lot more difficult to send it to the glue factory. But people don’t stop using paste simply because they’ve made an equine friend. Named for the animal it follows from owner to owner, through various hardships and across national borders, “ EO ” is a damning polemic on our relationship to other intelligent species — as free labor, food and companions — as seen through the dewy, wide eyes of a donkey whom we come to adore.

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While “EO” is not a direct remake, it’s certainly more than homage. Bresson’s film was, among other things, a rejection of on-screen sentimentality. Five minutes in, the child who gave Balthazar his name dies, after which, the donkey repeatedly changes owners, an anonymous possession to whom only the audience (as opposed to the characters) seemed particularly attached. That same dynamic is true here, to a degree, except that Skolimowski romanticizes and partly anthropomorphizes the beast, giving him subjective shots and flashbacks, perhaps even dream sequences. (How else to explain the striking red filters and free-floating drone footage?)

Unlike Bresson’s film, which begins at birth, the donkey is full-grown at the outset and already has a name, EO, flashed on screen amid the strobe lights of a traveling circus performance. EO is well looked after here — and downright adored by Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska), the Polish dancer who performs alongside him in the ring. She caresses his mane and plants kisses in his beard, feeding him carrot muffins on special occasions. What more to life is there than this?

Then a crowd of animal rights protesters appears, accusing the circus of “torture,” and demanding that it immediately cease using live animals. EO is carted away, the protesters thinking themselves victorious — but little do they realize that his life will be downhill from here. (As it happens, the same thing is happening in France today. Activists have demanded that certain wild animals no longer be used in film and TV shoots, so the trainers are obliged to put them down, as they can no longer afford to care for the creatures.)

This logistical complication bears mentioning since Skolimowski and company clearly made the film with live donkeys — six of them, to be precise — and while the crew took great care to respect the animals, one day such a movie may not be permitted at all. For now, no convincing equivalent for real animals exists, and movies with virtual substitutes feel increasingly like live-action cartoons. Of course, there’s good reason for on-set safety guidelines, as a movie like “The Adventures of Milo & Otis” made clear. Twenty kittens were reportedly killed during that film, and another was dropped over a cliff to get a shot.

Meanwhile, this movie wouldn’t be the same if EO were CG, and part of its magic (for the film is effective, even if it was made with a heavy hoof) comes from the way we project human emotions on its largely silent protagonist. Skolimowski uses other tricks to communicate the mood, such as Paweł Mykietyn’s unambiguous electronic score and a dizzying array of trick shots, some from EO’s point of view. In one deliberately ironic scene, the donkey gazes out the window to see a herd of wild horses running free. Is that envy we’re meant to see on his face?

Writing for Cahiers du Cinéma, Jean-Luc Godard famously described “Au Hasard Balthazar” as giving audiences “the world in an hour and a half,” and though Skolimowski rejects so many of Bresson’s artistic conceits (starting with the way he wants a donkey that acts, rather than an ambivalent beast), he shares that goal. Both directors use the animal to comment on human nature, though Skolimowski is more didactic, including shots of deforestation and a massive manmade dam, whereas Bresson invited a certain ambiguity. Here, characters are instantly forgotten, their stories abandoned. One quite shockingly has his throat slit without explanation. Through it all, EO remembers only his circus friend.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (Competition), May 19, 2020. Running time: 88 MIN. (Original title: “Hi-han”)

• Production: (Poland-Italy) A Skopia Film, Jeremy Thomas presentation of a Skopia Film production, in co-production with Alien Films, Polwell, Moderator Inwestycje, Veilo Ewa Żyłka, Warmia-Masuria Film Fund, Podkarpackie Regional Film Fund, Strefa Kultury Wroclaw, Ares 2002, Polish Film Institute, MIC, Regione Lazio. (World sales: HanWay Films, London.) Producers: Ewa Piaskowska, Jerzy Skolimowski. Executive producer: Jeremy Thomas. Co-producer: Eileen Muriel Tasca.
• Crew: Director: Jerzy Skolimowki. Screenplay: Ewa Piaskowska, Jerzy Skolimowski. Camera: Michał Dymek. Editor: Agnieszka Glińska. Music: Paweł Mykietyn.
• With: Sandra Drzymalska, Lorenzo Zurzolo, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Isabelle Huppert.

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EO film review — vivid meditation on power through the eyes of a donkey

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Soulful and mysterious, this donkey odyssey is an unforgettable experience

Time Out says

Okay, hands up: who had a donkey on their bingo card as the breakout movie star of 2023 ? The little mule at the centre of this intensely life-enriching, gloriously shot, sometimes acid-trippy parable about the tumultuous life of one beast of burden in modern-day Europe proves that you don’t need words to be captivating on screen. 

Like Winnie the Pooh’s doleful pal, Eeyore, EO’s name is taken from the braying noise he sometimes uses to alert the world to moments of mild displeasure. It’s a rare sound – this is a pretty chilled donkey – although his unfortunate tendency to make a dash for it when no one is looking cascades him from one uncertain episode to the next. The film begins in a Polish circus and takes in long-haul truck journeys, treks through fairy-tale forests, and stints on farms and horse racing stables. The latter comes to an abrupt end when he inadvertently knocks over, well, everything in his stable. Like all silent film stars worth their salt-lick, EO is a master of slapstick. 

But Polish arthouse veteran Jerzy Skolimowski, who has scratched out such dark depictions of the human soul as 1970’s psychosexual shocker Deep End , hasn’t lost his edge down the years. He directs with endless compassion but zero sentimentality, reflecting the ugliness of the world through the imponderable eyes of this little donkey. Amid the widescreen European landscapes come vivid jolts of violence: pissed-up football thugs bearing crowbars and a sudden, heartstopping murder. EO is marooned somewhere between a natural world full of wonder and the basest instincts of humankind. 

The shifts in location and mood are powered by Paweł Mykietyn‘s stirring score (with the odd blast of Beethoven when things get hairy) and framed with eloquent compositions. In one of them, EO is backdropped by charging stallions, like a battered Mini overtaken by a clutch of Ferraris, and it creates a brief moment that’s alive with communion, solidarity and sadness.

In a cruel irony, it’s animal rights activists who initially separate him from his doting circus trainer (Sandra Drzymalska). She’s the one person who genuinely cares for his welfare (and has a ready supply of his favourite carrot muffins) – at least, until he encounters a young lapsed priest and finds himself at his mother’s Italian villa. Isabelle Huppert cameos as the regally despairing mum, who upbraids her dissolute offspring for his gambling addiction, while EO munches serenely on her manicured lawns.

Even  Isabelle Huppert can’t pull focus from this little inscrutable donkey 

That domestic drama, a nod perhaps to the melancholy spiritualism of Robert Bresson’s great donkey flick Au Hasard Balthazar, briefly shuts out EO from his own story. But even La Huppert can’t pull focus from this little inscrutable donkey for long, as he continues his journey into the unknown. 

The effect is eerie, profound and emotional. As a mirror back onto humanity’s foibles and criminal excesses, EO is the perfect heir to Bresson’s long-suffering Balthazar. And while Skolimowski never beats this drum too hard, his big-eared star’s odyssey shows humanity to be just as capable of casual brutality and callous indifference as ever. You worry for this little mule, but ultimately you worry for us even more. 

In UK cinemas Feb 3

Cast and crew

• Director: Jerzy Skolimowski
• Screenwriter: Jerzy Skolimowski, Ewa Piaskowska
• Sandra Drzymalska
• Isabelle Huppert
• Lorenzo Zurzolo
• Mateusz Kosciukiewicz

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• A Donkey’s Inner Life Reveals Itself in Jerzy Skolimowsky’s Tender, Glorious <i>EO</i>

A Donkey’s Inner Life Reveals Itself in Jerzy Skolimowsky’s Tender, Glorious EO

L ike a mistreated starlet, nature often gets a bum deal in the movies. When the light is good, you can always just turn the camera on it and make a pretty picture. But it takes a great deal of care—your eyes need to learn to listen, perhaps, to all that’s in front of them—to capture its fierce, hushed awesomeness.

Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski does that, and more, in his intimate zephyr of a film EO, the story of a donkey who journeys from Poland to Italy, experiencing kindness and its stark opposite at the hands of humans, communing with the other animals and flora around him, sometimes even just picking up scents, and secrets, carried on the breeze. This is a sad story, but not a punishing one; it draws out a kind of joyful melancholy. Animal lovers—and Skolimowski himself is one—may find it difficult to watch at times. (I don’t recommend it for kids.) But this great and unpredictable filmmaker, now 84, takes great care with his donkey, and with our feelings. Any violence takes place off-screen, maybe not so much to soften the effect but out of respect for his main character and for us. The last thing Skolimowski and his cowriter, Ewa Piaskowska (also his wife), want to do is to throw us out of the movie and its delicate spell. There is no more beautiful-looking film this year; shot by Michal Dymek, it often looks lit from within, glowing as softly as a lantern. And even beyond that, EO may be one of the greatest movies ever made about the spirit of animals, as much as we can know it.

EO begins with dream images, a circus scene tinged with red. We catch glimpses of a woman in a satin costume, flashes of gray donkey fur, the orblike wonder of a large, unblinking eye. This donkey, EO —a name that echoes the sound he makes, a song built right in—has a job as a performer. He also has a costar who loves him, Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska). When they’re separated, it’s her gentle kindness that he’ll remember. Skolimowski shows this in tender flashbacks; if he’s anthropomorphizing, he’s also making a pretty good guess as to what might go on in an animal’s head.

Read more: Dead to Me Was a Love Story All Along

The circus goes bankrupt. All the animals are sold off. EO is carted off to a new home, which in some ways, save Kasandra’s absence, isn’t so bad: He now lives at what looks to be a large stable, somewhere in the Polish countryside. It’s a brand-new structure, and a few pretentious dignitaries are on hand to cut the ribbon. Eventually, the camera turns from them to EO standing watchfully nearby. There’s a regal circlet of carrots around his neck, ready for munching whenever he pleases. For now, he’s a guest of honor; later, he’ll be enlisted to pull a little cart, and that’s fine too. Until it isn’t. Unnerved by his proximity to two noisy horses being introduced for the first time, presumably for mating purposes, he knocks over a shelf full of trophies. Away he goes to his next home.

This one isn’t so bad, either, though he’s too depressed to accept the single fat carrot a well-meaning farm lady tries to offer him. (She has no idea how paltry her offering is, compared to his past 24-carrot adornment.) EO’s adventures eventually take him elsewhere: to a majestic night forest, half frightening, half glorious, where a fat spider spins a web from fairy thread and skinny foxes twitch in the moonlight. He finds his way to a small village, where he brays at a display of goldfish-filled aquariums in a shop window (who knows why?) and later becomes a hero for a local football team, who adopt him as a kind of mascot. But right after this, something terrible happens to him. There’s an intercession, a healing. Somehow he ends up in an Italian mansion—Isabelle Huppert is there in a chic-scary red-patterned velvet dress. Because, why not?

Read more: The 58 Most Anticipated Movies of 2022

This is the ebb and flow of EO: we both watch him and see the world through his eyes. Running with his cart, his legs moving like little machines, his ears pointing to the sky, he’s a marvel of determination and efficiency. His fur has a pleasing, soft-rough texture—you can feel it without even touching. His eyes, proportionally enormous, both hold and reflect all his thoughts and dreams and memories—or maybe they’re just reflectors of our own? bThe point is that he becomes our twin. What happens to him happens to us.

EO won the Jury Prize at Cannes last spring; when Skolimowski took the stage to accept, he thanked all six of the donkeys who played EO by name. In the months since I first saw this film, many of the people I’ve talked to about it have nodded and said knowingly, “Ah, like Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar .” Well, yeah—and no. Skolimowski has spoken of his love for that film, and how much it moved him, and how it’s certainly an influence on EO. But even if Skolimowski’s donkey sometimes suffers, the movie is hardly about his suffering. Skolimowski’s approach is mildly experimental, but in the end direct. His movie is about, maybe, all the reasons we love animals, all the reasons we can’t explain. We look at them and see a soul there—no scientist can yet prove its absence—and it helps us locate our own. Sometimes it’s easier to believe in animals than it is to believe in God. And much easier to believe in them than in ourselves.

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Follows a donkey who encounters on his journeys good and bad people, experiences joy and pain, exploring a vision of modern Europe through his eyes. Follows a donkey who encounters on his journeys good and bad people, experiences joy and pain, exploring a vision of modern Europe through his eyes. Follows a donkey who encounters on his journeys good and bad people, experiences joy and pain, exploring a vision of modern Europe through his eyes.

• Jerzy Skolimowski
• Ewa Piaskowska
• 79 User reviews
• 139 Critic reviews
• 85 Metascore
• 31 wins & 65 nominations total

Top cast 29

• The Countess

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Director Jerzy Skolimowski has said that the only time he ever cried while watching a movie was with Au hasard Balthazar (1966) , which is about a mistreated donkey. The story heavily influenced EO (2022) .
• Goofs When Kasandra gets off the motorbike, she hangs her helmet over the right rear-view mirror of the bike. Later, when Dude puts his helmet back on, Kasandra's helmet is still hanging there, but after the next cut, when Dude gets on the motorbike and starts the engine, Kasandra's helmet is now hanging over the left rear-view mirror. In the next scene, when Dude drives away, Kasandra's helmet is gone, but later, when she runs after him and gets on the motorbike, he hands her helmet to the back.
• Connections Featured in The Oscars (2023)
• Soundtracks 2nd Concerto for Cello and Orchestra Written by Pawel Mykietyn Performed by Marcel Markowski

User reviews 79

• Dec 28, 2022
• How long is EO? Powered by Alexa
• January 21, 2023 (United States)
• Jezioro Bystrzyckie, Dolnoslaskie, Poland (Eo in front of the dam)
• Skopia Film
• Alien Films
• Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Nov 20, 2022

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• Runtime 1 hour 28 minutes

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MUST END THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16 3:45   5:50  

DIRECTED BY JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI

ACADEMY AWARD® NOMINEE! Best International Feature Film 2023

An immersive drama by 84-year-old Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski (FOUR NIGHTS WITH ANNA, THE SHOUT, DEEP END) – a visually spectacular, often surreal odyssey of the eponymous winsome gray donkey (played by six different Polish and Sardinian donkeys). This long, strange trip begins in a Polish circus where he is adored (and liberated by animal rights activists), moves on to a horse farm (from which he escapes), after which he briefly becomes the mascot of a soccer team. The world experienced through the animal’s eyes is at times cruel, loving, random, dreamy, chaotic, or idyllic. Surprisingly, Isabelle Huppert makes an appearance as The Countess in a palatial Italian villa where the donkey briefly sojourns. 2022     88 MIN.     POLAND / ITALY     SIDESHOW / JANUS FILMS IN POLISH, FRENCH, ENGLISH & ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES        

#1 Film of the Year – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times “…Now 84, Skolimowski has made one of the rare movies that speak to life’s most essential questions, and he’s done so with the ecstatic vision and fearlessness of a cinematic genius who seems as if he’s just getting started.” WINNER Best Foreign Language Film New York Film Critics Circle Jury Prize 2022 Cannes Film Festival “The best film of the year” – Amy Taubin, ARTFORUM “…a shocking and tender tour de force…wild, boldly expressionistic… no movie that I’ve seen this year has moved me as deeply, made me feel as optimistic about cinema or engaged me with such intellectual vigor as EO, whose octogenarian genius auteur and all the donkeys who play EO — Hola, Tako, Marietta, Ettore, Rocco and Mela — deserve all the love and the carrots, too.” – Manohla Dargis, The New York Times Read the full Critic's Pick review. "EO’s personality shines thanks to Skolimowski’s daringly imaginative depictions, both visual and emotional, of the donkey’s point of view." – Richard Brody, The New Yorker “HYPNOTIC. Bold in a way few contemporary films truly are.” – Christina Newland, Sight and Sound “A FLAMBOYANT, VISIONARY WORK. The wildest, youngest film in the Cannes lineup was made by an 84-year-old director up for anything.” – Jonathan Romney, Film Comment “AN ENGROSSING EXPERIENCE… If there are some movies that play better on a big screen in a dark theatre with the sound turned up, this is one of them. Skolimowski’s extremely visceral direction, makes even the smallest of events seem epic… Does the cinema have room for two art house donkey movies in its repertoire? Robert Bresson’s 1966 AU HASARD BALTHAZAR is the other great donkey film, but it’s a different, ahem, beast. Whereas Bresson used his animal as means to observe shades of human frailty and cruelty in provincial France, Skolimowski… fill(s) his movie with breathtaking imagery atop a minimalist narrative.” – Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter “AN EXEMPLARY, FRESH AND RADIANT PIECE OF WORK… The whole world looks more scintillating, inviting and exciting when experienced through the filmmakers’ heightened visual awareness.” – Todd McCarthy, Deadline “EO is an animal film that stands defiantly on its own hooves, marked out by a potent emotional charge, very contemporary eco-consciousness, and filmmaking that at its best fairly sizzles in its strangeness.” – Jonathan Romney, Screen International

'EO' Ending Explained: How Does the Oscar-Nominated Polish Film End?

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Yes, 'deadpool & wolverine' is fun, but it points to a bigger problem, quentin tarantino called this kevin costner movie "one of the best directorial debuts" ever.

With a plot centered around a meandering mute donkey, the Oscar-nominated Polish film EO has more than a few ambiguous moments, and its ending is perhaps the most befuddling of them all. The entire movie is a series of haphazard twists and turns, as the eponymous donkey stoically navigates the human world. Still, the third act is conspicuously perplexing, as subplots seem to enter and exit Eo's journey with greater frequency and gravitas, only for the film to end in a sudden and tragic fashion. It is confusing and unsettling, and yet a deeper reading of the ending demonstrates its connections to the film's most crucial themes.

'EO's Third Act Opens Up Several Subplots Before an Abrupt Ending

After Eo kicks a man unconscious at the end of the film's second act, he finds himself in the back of a truck, en route to his next location. Along the way, however, criminals rob and murder the truck driver at a gas station. Once the police show up, a drifter named Vito ( Lorenzo Zurzolo ) passes by the crime scene, takes a liking to the donkey, and sneaks him away from the crowd. They travel to his hometown, where it is revealed that Vito is a priest who has a tenuous, yet romantic relationship with his stepmother ( Isabelle Huppert ).

At long last, the film seems to have found its human leads. However, just as the story establishes these anthropocentric dramatic stakes, Eo runs away once more, and Vito and his stepmother are never heard from again. After a beautifully crafted series of shots of the rogue Eo standing before a rushing waterfall, the final scene commences with Eo walking through a cow pen. Eo is the only donkey amongst the herd of cattle, but this doesn't seem to faze the present humans, who edge Eo along with the cows into a slaughterhouse. In the last shot, Eo enters the building and the screen cuts to black over the sharp, unmistakable sound of blades slicing together. It is a troubling dénouement, leaving little mystery to the fact that Eo meets a violent demise.

Despite the disturbing straightforwardness of this final shot, its bluntness leaves the audience questioning the purpose of everything preceding it. Why bother including the drama of the truck driver's murder or developing Vito and his stepmother so thoroughly as characters, just for it all to be irrelevant in the end? What is the point of Eo's detours if they lead to nowhere but death? And finally, why didn't the humans outside the slaughterhouse seem to notice that there is a donkey in their cattle herd? And why did they willfully lead him to his fate?

The Donkey's Fate Highlights the Film's Animal Rights Message

The answers to these questions boil down to two integral themes explored throughout the film: animal rights and the serendipitous nature of animal life. The film emphasizes the topic of animal rights from its very beginning. Eo is introduced to the audience as a circus donkey, and although we never fully learn about the circus' treatment of their animals, the second scene shows the circus being shut down over a new animal rights ordinance. Thus begins Eo's journey, where he encounters a variety of people who treat him with either affection or abuse. In the periphery, he also intersects with hunters and trappers, all of whom come across as loathsome for their willingness to kill and commodify animals.

RELATED: Eo Turns A Donkey Into A Movie Star

A couple of times in passing, characters also mention the fact that salami can sometimes contain donkey meat. While the fact is stated innocuously, it connects to the final scene, explaining why the people outside the slaughterhouse did not care that there was a donkey in their livestock. In their eyes, donkey meat could be turned to ground beef all the same, thus exacerbating the film's motif of unethical animal treatment and consumption. This becomes all the more conclusive just after the screen cuts to black, and text appears dedicating the film to animals in danger or duress, and encouraging people to rethink their assumptions about animal life .

'EO' Forces the Audience to Question the Animal Mind and Heart

That emphasis on animal life and humans' conception of it is the film's second paramount theme, and it narratively justifies Eo's long-winded, aimless detours. All throughout the movie, Eo moves in and out of people's lives, sometimes making an impact and sometimes not. Regardless, the donkey remains seemingly indifferent. Even when the truck driver gets murdered or Vito has a supposedly life-changing interaction with his stepmom, Eo's story moves forward with little to no consideration for his human company.

The human subplots in Eo 's third act are thus intentionally tangential, and they end prematurely because they are irrelevant to Eo's life and story. Director Jerzy Skolimowski wants audiences to notice this in the most jarring way. As much as people may like to believe that there is a soulful connection between the wandering Eo and the vagabond Vito, the former's fleeing just when the latter's story begins reflects how apathetic Eo (and animals at large) can be to humanity's woes, troubles, and triumphs.

Is Eo the Hero of the Movie?

This is not to say that Eo is antagonistic. Conventional readings of the film would actually see him as the hero. However, a more critical evaluation sees that the donkey simply has no conception of heroes or villains, and instead exists in his own plain of non-human intelligence. While other Hollywood explorations in anthropomorphism like Homeward Bound , Babe , or The Bear might lean into the warm parallels between the human and animal psyches, Eo takes a more realistic approach. All moments of identification with the creature are dubious, forcing the audience to question what animals think and feel.

All the same, one can hardly meet the final scene without strong empathy for Eo. As the donkey enters the slaughterhouse, questions regarding his emotions and intelligence reach a haunting zenith, and the movie's two foremost themes collide. For all the debate surrounding what Eo is capable of understanding, we feel for him in his final moments, demonstrating how empathy can transcend across species—regardless of whether it is reciprocated or how we might choose to respond. That is the ultimate message that EO raises, and the unanswerable question that its ending leaves us pondering.

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Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski

May all your dreams come true.

The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But not even for a moment does he lose his innocence.

Sandra Drzymalska Isabelle Huppert Lorenzo Zurzolo Mateusz Kościukiewicz Tomasz Organek Lolita Chammah Agata Sasinowska Anna Rokita Michał Przybysławski Gloria Iradukunda Piotr Szaja Aleksander Janiszewski Delfina Wilkońska Andrzej Szeremeta Wojciech Andrzejuk Mateusz Murański Marcin Drabicki Maciej Stępniak Fernando Junior Gomes da Silva Krzysztof Karczmarz Waldemar Barwiński Saverio Fabbri Katarzyna Russ Kateřina Holánová

Director Director

Jerzy Skolimowski

Producers Producers

Ewa Piaskowska Jerzy Skolimowski Eileen Tasca Marcin Kupiecki Chiara Scardamaglia Janusz Hetman

Writers Writers

Jerzy Skolimowski Ewa Piaskowska

Casting Casting

Paulina Krajnik Jorgelina Depetris Pochintesta

Editor Editor

Agnieszka Glińska

Cinematography Cinematography

Michał Dymek

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Maria Wider Paweł Powolny Giorgio Melidoni Maja Astrid Diedenhofen

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Jeremy Thomas Teodoro Casani Alainée Kent Teo Casani Ivan Kelava

Camera Operator Camera Operator

Paweł Edelman

Additional Photography Add. Photography

Giuseppe Foderaro Paweł Edelman

Production Design Production Design

Mirosław Koncewicz

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Robert Dyrcz Kamila Grzybowska-Sosnowska

Stunts Stunts

Paweł Jusiński Tomasz Lewandowski Michał Krzyżkowiak

Composer Composer

Paweł Mykietyn

Sound Sound

Paweł Jaźwiecki Suraj Bardia Radosław Ochnio Azzurra Stirpe Pandiyan R. Marta Weronika Werońska Olivier Chane Marcin Matlak

Costume Design Costume Design

Katarzyna Lewińska

Makeup Makeup

Aleksandra Dutkiewicz Weronika Zielińska

Skopia Film Alien Films HAKA Films Moderator Inwestycje MiC Regione Lazio

Italy Poland

Primary Language

Spoken languages.

Italian English Spanish Polish French

Releases by Date

19 may 2022, 13 sep 2022, 04 oct 2022, 06 oct 2022, 07 oct 2022, 08 oct 2022, 11 oct 2022, 05 nov 2022, 19 nov 2022, 27 nov 2022, 27 jan 2023, 02 feb 2023, 07 mar 2023.

• Theatrical limited

30 Sep 2022

25 nov 2022, 03 feb 2023, 16 mar 2023, 19 oct 2022, 20 oct 2022, 18 nov 2022, 02 dec 2022, 22 dec 2022, 13 jan 2023, 09 feb 2023, 06 apr 2023, 14 apr 2023, 03 oct 2023, 18 jan 2024, 21 feb 2023, 22 feb 2023, 15 may 2023, releases by country.

• Theatrical MA 15+
• Premiere Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival
• Premiere Toronto International Film Festival
• Theatrical K-16
• Premiere Cannes Film Festival
• Digital TP VOD
• Physical DVD & Blu-Ray
• Digital MyCanal
• Premiere Hamburg Film Festival
• Theatrical 12
• Theatrical 14
• Premiere Torino Film Festival

Netherlands

• Premiere International Film Festival Rotterdam
• Theatrical 16
• Premiere Theatro Gil Vicente, Barcelos (Cineclube ZOOM)
• Theatrical limited 15
• Theatrical limited NC16

South Korea

• Premiere Busan International Film Festival
• Theatrical 15
• Premiere Göteborg Film Festival
• Premiere Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival
• Premiere BFI London Film Festival
• Premiere New York Film Festival
• Premiere AFI Fest
• Theatrical NR
• Digital NR Criterion Channel + VOD

88 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Colin Burgess ★★★½ 18

6 donkeys played EO in this. I’m really good at recognizing different donkeys so that really took me out of it

Review by Karsten ★★★★

when (if) I make it to 84, I hope I get to make something this appreciative of the earth and the creatures that make it worth living on

Review by Ella Kemp ★★★½

I would protect EO, listen to EO, cherish EO, support EO, pray to EO, love this here donkey named EO

Review by davidehrlich ★★★★

EO is my best friend.

Review by oliveblair ★★★★ 4

A24 killing themselves that they didn’t produce this fr

Review by monab ★★★★

the donkey gaze idk

Review by ˗ˏˋ suspirliam ˊˎ˗ ★★★½ 7

big year for sad donkey cinema

Review by fran hoepfner ★★★★

I loved when Eo celebrated his birthday

Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 4

One of those children’s Odyssey movies about a domestic animal escaping into the wild for the first time/trying to return to their owner, only instead of being family-friendly it was a haunting, abstract Euroart light show of exploitation and abuse. Has all the shallow focus and subjective sound design you’d expect of a movie that features an adorable donkey running from episodic adventure to the next, including momentary glimpses of feeling and fantasy. The actual stops themselves however are quite bizarre and disturbing and experienced with the lack of narrative context inherent to the perspective we’re witnessing them from, making them feel all the more cruel and hypnotic. And which is exacerbated even further by an insane level of sensory…

Review by Patrick Willems ★★★★ 6

Was not betting on this being the only 2022 movie with drone shots to rival Ambulance

Review by David Sims ★★★★ 5

nice donkey good boy

Review by KYK ★★★½ 3

he kinda like Christ fr

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EO . Courtesy of Janus FIlms and Sideshow.

No movie that I’ve seen this year has moved me as deeply, made me feel as optimistic about cinema or engaged me with such intellectual vigor. —Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

The best film of the year. —Amy Taubin, Art Forum

Hypnotic. Bold in a way few contemporary films truly are. —Christina Newland, Sight & Sound

Daringly imaginative. —Richard Brody, The New Yorker

A sobering, cinematic masterpiece. —Dustin Chang, Screen Anarchy

• Jerzy Skolimowski
• Poland/Italy
• Polish, Italian, English, French with English subtitles

Best International Feature Film Nominee at the 95th Academy Awards Cannes Jury Prize Winner New York Film Critics Circle Winner – Best International Film Top 10 Film of 2022 – Film Comment , Sight and Sound , Manohla Dargis, Cahiers du cinéma , John Waters, Amy Taubin, Stephanie Zacharek, Justin Chang, RogerEbert.com

At age 84, legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski ( The Deep End, Moonlighting ) has directed one of his spryest, most visually inventive films, following the travels of a peripatetic donkey named EO. After being removed from the only life he’s ever known in a traveling circus, EO begins a journey across the Polish and Italian countryside, experiencing cruelty and kindness, captivity and freedom. Skolimowski imagines the animal’s mesmerizing journey as an ever-shifting interior landscape, marked by absurdity and warmth in equal measure, putting the viewer in the unique perspective of the protagonist. Skolimowski has constructed his own bold vision about the follies of human nature, seen from the ultimate outsider’s perspective. An NYFF60 Main Slate selection. A Sideshow and Janus Films release.

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How Should We Create Things?

In 1977, the artist, musician, and producer Brian Eno was in Berlin, working with David Bowie on the album that would become “Heroes.” They’d been collaborating on a song in an unconventional way, using a deck of cards called “Oblique Strategies,” which Eno had developed together with the artist Peter Schmidt. There were more than a hundred cards in the deck, and printed on each was a creative prompt, such as “What to increase? What to reduce?,” “A line has two sides,” or “Honour thy error as a hidden intention.” Eno and Bowie had each taken a card, then slipped it into a pocket. Neither knew what the other had drawn. They were taking turns working on the song, following different hidden ideas.

In “Eno,” the new documentary by Gary Hustwit, Eno chuckles, recalling that the song took a long time to complete, in large part because his card suggested that he “change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency,” while Bowie’s advised him to “destroy the most important thing.” The song itself, “Moss Garden,” doesn’t suggest two artists working at cross-purposes; it’s a contemplative riff on Japanese music, meant to evoke a peaceful place that Bowie had visited in Kyoto. And yet it’s restless in a way that makes it endlessly listenable, with strange, rocket-like sounds in the far distance and mutating birdsong swirling around Eno’s synthesizer and Bowie’s koto.

I’ve listened to music recorded or produced by Eno nearly every day for decades. He’s well known for coining the term “ ambient music ” (his “Discreet Music,” from 1975, is a landmark in the genre) and for working on career-defining records by Bowie, Talking Heads, U2, and others; for the past few decades, he’s also made “generative” music, in which computer programs work within parameters he’s set to create compositions that unfold infinitely. More broadly, though, he’s developed a recognizable approach to creativity that’s cerebral, chance-driven, hands-off, impersonal, collaborative, meditative, ecological, extended in time, and open to accident. In the high-pressure environment of a recording studio, where every hour costs money, he introduces layers of abstraction, randomness, and play.

There’s a sense in which music is the most immediate of art forms: it’s pure physicality, as our bodies make art by vibrating the air. And yet it can also be strange, fleeting, and distant. In his poem “To Music,” Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:

You are the transformation of all feeling into—what? . . . audible landscape. . . . the other side of the air, pure, immense, no longer lived in.

In my screening of “Eno”—the film is “generative,” too, and viewers of different screenings will encounter different material—Eno describes the production of “The Great Curve,” by Talking Heads, in which a growing cast of backing vocals whirls around David Byrne’s lead melody until it’s cloaked, almost unidentifiable, in frenetic sound. The production, inspired by the layered Afrobeat of Fela Kuti, combines the embodied and the impersonal aspects of music; it’s both rooted in performance and cut loose from the magnetism of the central performer. It expresses an ethos of creativity in which, instead of hogging the stage, it’s often better to step aside or recede.

How should we create things? The word “should” isn’t quite right, since there’s no correct way to be creative; still, when you’re actually creating something, you have to answer the question definitively for yourself, with some urgency. It’s not just about getting to a desired result. Your methods have an ethics to them, too.

One popular idea is that we ought to “make” things. In books like Robert Pirsig’s “ Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ” and Matthew Crawford’s “ Shop Class as Soulcraft ,” we encounter the notion that there’s something special about making things yourself, to your own specifications, with a particular goal in mind and in a particular state of mind—a kind of elevated craftsmanship. “Craftsmanship means dwelling on a task for a long time and going deeply into it, because you want to get it right,” Crawford writes. He’s thinking mainly about making tough, hefty things with your hands—furniture, engines, houses, and so on—but, if we were to view his sensibility through a soft-focus lens, we might assert that you can make computer programs, too, in a craftsmanlike way. Like a carpenter in a workshop, a coder in her “maker lab” can be painstaking, careful, even loving toward what she’s making, hoping to develop things that satisfy her and others, fitting both her requirements and theirs. Harnessing her materials, she can feel what Crawford calls “the experience of direct responsibility” for the outcome—a rarity in our specialized, mediated, outsourced age.

Eno has a different way of imagining creativity. In Hustwit’s documentary, he talks not about making but about “growing.” Demonstrating some of the software he uses for creating generative music, he shows how a few elements can be designed and then put into motion—a keyboard melody, for example, can be fed through a program that randomly skips some of its notes, so that the melody renders differently as it repeats. Like Rilke, Eno thinks of music in terms of landscape; he might expand the space of his composition by adding low and high elements—wind and birds, metaphorically speaking—that also change over time. The idea is that the music isn’t finished. It will continue growing without him. He is the person who puts the art work into motion, but he isn’t at its center, and he isn’t responsible for every detail of what it becomes. He pushes it out from the dock and lets it find its own way.

As a writer, I’m more of a maker; I enjoy the exacting selection of words, the endless polishing of sentences. But, as a listener, I enjoy Eno’s world, and every now and then I try to enter it in my writing life. Many years ago, my wife gave me “Oblique Strategies” as a gift, and I use it from time to time while I’m writing. As I’m mired in endless revisions, it’s nice to be told to “define an area as ‘safe’ and use it as an anchor,” or to “go slowly all the way round the outside.” In some cases, the questions in the deck can directly inspire approaches in a piece of writing: “What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate”; “What is the reality of the situation?”; “Into the impossible.”

Applying a little Eno to my writing can loosen it up, shifting it from the precise, controlled, responsible “making” track onto the playful, surprising, impersonal “growing” track. And it’s possible to take that process a little further. Elsewhere in “To Music,” Rilke suggests that music is our “innermost us” externalized; musicians project inner life into the space surrounding us, forming a “skillful horizon.” I sometimes wonder if the process can happen in reverse—can’t artistic experience work its way inward, altering our interior landscapes?—and so I’ve tried using Eno’s techniques, which are meant for creating art, purely on the level of thought. It’s interesting to choose an Oblique Strategy for the day and see where it takes you: “Remember those quiet evenings”; “Disconnect from desire”; “Look at the order in which you do things.” You can change the conditions, then let things grow.

Making and growing aren’t distinct, of course—they’re just ways of conducting yourself, and they can braid together. The best aspect of my deck is that it’s made by hand. My wife builds collages, and often clips interesting images out of magazines; she used them to construct the cards, randomly matching the prompts with the images. The correspondences are so striking—“The tape is now the music” goes with a photograph of a real dog looking at a toy dog; “Don’t break the silence” is matched with a picture of a deer exiting a dark tunnel—that, looking over them recently, I asked her if they were really random. They were, she insisted: “It’s your mind doing the work.” In a recording studio, musicians can collaborate; by drawing contradictory cards, Bowie and Eno somehow enlivened their partnership. The circumstances of our creativity are all different. Some of us work alone. Still, it’s important to be creative in your thinking about your creative work. It’s even possible, by giving up a little control, to collaborate with yourself. ♦

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‘The Critic’ Review: Dangerous Liaisons

Ian McKellen stars a drama critic in 1930s London who has much higher standards for the theater than for his own professional ethics.

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By Ben Kenigsberg

Anyone who works in the arts can be forgiven for casting a critic as a villain. But a reviewer who dangles potential praise as leverage in a blackmail scheme? That’s going a step too far.

Jimmy Erskine (Ian McKellen), the title character of “The Critic,” set in London in 1934, considers himself an erudite wit who holds the city’s drama scene to high standards. In reality, he is a fiendish egoist who tears down gifted performers for his own amusement. The movie, directed by Anand Tucker, is based on “Curtain Call,” a novel by the former film reviewer Anthony Quinn , whose purported inspiration for the character was James Agate, who held the stage beat at London’s Sunday Times for years.

The screenwriter Patrick Marber (“Closer”) brings a typically nasty edge to the proceedings. After an encounter between Jimmy and the police threatens his position at the Chronicle, Jimmy hatches a plot that involves Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), a rising actress, and David Brooke (Mark Strong), who has inherited the paper from his father and is said to dislike Jimmy’s “proclivities.” (Jimmy barely conceals his sexual orientation; in addition to cruising the park at night, he has a live-in secretary, Tom, played by Alfred Enoch, who accompanies him in public.)

Visually, “The Critic” is polished enough, despite some splashes of apparent digital lacquer. But Marber hasn’t supplied an incontrovertible motive to bind Nina to Jimmy. And there is something arguably troubling about the way McKellen’s character has been conceived. The subtext seems to be that Jimmy’s familiarity with operating in the shadows and having his liaisons genteelly wielded against him has given him a special aptitude for extortion. But as a gay man in an era when Britain criminalized homosexual activity, he would, one assumes, be far more likely to be a victim of blackmail than its perpetrator.

The Critic Rated R for murder and meanspirited reviews. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters.