Possession

Andrzej Żuławski's Possession arrived at Cannes in 1981 and won Isabelle Adjani the Best Actress prize; she would also take the César for Best Actress the following year, an unprecedented double for a single performance in the festival's history. The film was shot in Cold War West Berlin in late 1980 — its setting and visual texture inseparable from the city of the period — by cinematographer Bruno Nuytten, with Carlo Rambaldi (who had just designed the alien for Alien) responsible for the creature effects.

The film was extensively cut for its initial American release, where Limelight Pictures distributed a forty-minute-shorter version recut as a horror film. The full Żuławski edit circulated only on European prints and bootleg tapes for decades; restored versions began appearing in the 2010s, and the film has since been the subject of multiple critical reappraisals. Sight & Sound returned it to its Greatest Films of All Time list in 2022.

Sam Neill plays opposite Adjani; Heinz Bennent and Margit Carstensen — both Fassbinder regulars — appear in supporting roles. Żuławski wrote the script in the wake of his own divorce, and the production was famously difficult; Adjani has said she required a long recovery afterwards. The film's reputation as one of the most physically committed performances ever filmed is by now part of European cinema folklore, regularly cited in interviews with younger actors discussing the demands of the form.