The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Yorgos Lanthimos' The Killing of a Sacred Deer won the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes 2017, shared with Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here. The screenplay is co-written by Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou, Filippou is Lanthimos' regular Greek-language collaborator across Dogtooth (2009), Alps (2011), The Lobster (2015) and Kinds of Kindness (2024).

The film is structured around a deliberate reframing of Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis (the Greek tragedy in which Agamemnon must sacrifice his daughter to obtain favourable winds for the Trojan campaign) and the title refers to the original Greek setup. Lanthimos has been outspoken in interviews about the film's debt to ancient Greek dramatic structure, particularly its commitment to a moral problem with no acceptable resolution.

The cast pairs Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman (both of whom had appeared in Lanthimos' previous English-language feature The Lobster in 2015) with the breakthrough performance of Barry Keoghan, then twenty-four, in the central young-male role. Keoghan's career trajectory in the years following (culminating in his BAFTA-winning supporting role in The Banshees of Inisherin and his lead in Emerald Fennell's Saltburn) is now widely traced back to this performance. Cinematography is by Thimios Bakatakis, Lanthimos' regular Greek-trained collaborator. The film was shot in Cincinnati, Ohio, with the score built around Bach's Stabat Mater and György Ligeti's chamber works.