Winning the Cannes Jury Prize and NY Film Circle Critics Award, Jerzy Skolimowski’s first feature in seven years is a touching hero’s journey that follows the life of EO, a donkey.

As the film begins, EO is living a happy life as part of a circus, where is adored, performing alongside Kasandra (Sandra Dryzmalska). When animal-rights protesters disrupt the situation, and liberate him, EO moves on to a horse farm (from which he escapes), after which he briefly becomes the mascot of a soccer team. As he journeys through streets, valleys, and streams to Italy, the intimacy of the camera-work shows a world of pain, love, loss, and the brutality of humans. Surprisingly, veteran and legendary actress Isabelle Huppert (The Piano Teacher) makes an appearance as The Countess in a palatial Italian villa where the donkey briefly sojourns.

This immersive drama by 84-year-old Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski (Four Nights with Anna, The Shout, Deep End), depicts a visually spectacular, often surreal odyssey of the eponymous winsome gray donkey (played by six different Polish and Sardinian donkeys). Paying homage to Robert Bresson’s masterpiece, Au Hasard Balthazar, yet wholly its own, Skolimowski has made an emotive, lyrical and wonderfully moving film, which is visually inventive, placing the viewer directly in the heart and mind of the four-legged protagonist, in a journey marked by absurdity and warmth in equal measure.

EO has received an Oscar nomination for Best International Feature Film (2023).