EO

Released in 2022, EO is the seventeenth feature by Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski, who at the age of 84 returned to a major international stage with his most acclaimed film since the 1970s. Co-written with his long-time collaborator Ewa Piaskowska, it premiered in Competition at the 75th Cannes Film Festival, where it shared the Jury Prize with The Eight Mountains. Poland selected it as its submission for the 95th Academy Awards, where it received a nomination for Best International Feature Film.

The donkey at the centre of the film, played by six different animals (one of them named Tako, who became briefly famous after the Cannes premiere), is filmed by cinematographer Michał Dymek with bursts of saturated colour, drone movement and tilted handheld framing. Paweł Mykietyn's churning, percussive score won the Cannes Soundtrack Award. Around the donkey, a sparse human cast moves in and out, including Sandra Drzymalska as the circus performer Kasandra and Isabelle Huppert in a single, near-wordless scene as a countess.

Critical response was strong: the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics all named it among the year's best, and Skolimowski was given career retrospectives in several European cinematheques in the wake of its release. EO consolidated his late-career reputation as a still-restless modernist, and brought Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar into conversation with a new generation of viewers.