2022 Best Films: EO, Jerzy Skolimowski’s Tale of Donkey (Cannes Fest 2022)

Directed by vet Polish filmmaker, Jerzy Skolimowski, the film is inspired by Robert Bresson’s 1966 classic film, Au Hasard Balthazar.

It’s the bittersweet tale of a little circus donkey called EO — named for the sounds he makes — who sets off on a strange, phantasmagoric, adventure that assumes the shape of a road movie.

Along the way, he encounters other animals but, more consequently, kind and cruel people whose treatment of him reflects the denatured world that we have made.

Skolimowski, who’s 84, has made one of the rare movies that speak to life’s most essential questions.

He’s done so with the vision and fearless courage of a genius who seems as if he’s just getting started.  

Critical Status:
EO has won (so far) the Best Foreign Language Film from The N.Y. Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), L.A. Critics (LAFCA), NY Film Critics Online (NYFCO).
EO was submitted by Poland for the 2023 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, making the shortlist of 15 entries.
I was later included in the five finalists, but it did not win.  The winner was the German film, All Quiet on the Western Front.

 

In a scene from “EO,” a donkey in silhouette walks over a darkened hill against a dusky sky.
Credit…Sideshow and Janus Films

The film premiered in competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival in May 2022, where it won the Jury Prize, tying with The Eight Mountains.

In a scene from “EO,” a donkey in silhouette walks over a darkened hill against a dusky sky.

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