Essential Killing
Action! If there’s one word associated with cinema, the tension of movie sets, and the focus of attention, it’s this one. Action is very often at the heart of popular cinema: Harold Lloyd hanging from the clock hands in Safety Last! (1923), Cary Grant threatened and strafed by a plane in North by Northwest (1959), Franka Potente gasping for air in Run Lola Run (1998)... Westerns, swashbuckler films, martial arts or adventure flicks, thrillers, all these genres rely on action—sometimes frenetic, sometimes meticulously measured.
From movies by Sergei Eisenstein to Gilles Carle, from John Ford to John Boorman and Werner Herzog, via Paul Verhoeven, Kathryn Bigelow, Park Chan-wook, Érik Canuel, and Nicolas Winding Refn, this series will take you through the full range of emotions, from laughter to thrills, from fear to satisfaction.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, 2010 Venice International Film Festival
Captured by the US military in Afghanistan, Mohammed is transported to a secret detention centre in Europe. When the vehicle is riding in crashes, he finds himself suddenly free and on the run in a snow-blanketed forest, a world away from the desert home he knew. Relentlessly pursued by an army that does not officially exist, Mohammed must confront the necessity to kill in order to survive.
Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski is a Polish film director, screenwriter, actor, and painter. Beginning as a screenwriter for Andrzej Wajda's Innocent Sorcerers, he has made more than twenty films since his directorial debut in 1960. In 1967, he was awarded the Golden Bear for The Departure. Among his other notable films is Deep End (1970), The Shout (1978), Moonlighting (1982), and Essential Killing (2010). He lived in Los Angeles for over 20 years where he painted in a figurative, expressionist mode and occasionally acted in films. He returned to Poland, and to filmmaking as a writer and director, after a 17-year hiatus with Four Nights with Anna (2008). He received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2016 Venice Film Festival. His film EO (2022) was awarded the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film in 2023.
