The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But not even for a moment does he lose his innocence.
Born in 1938 in Łódź (Poland), he is a film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. Graduated in ethnology, literature and history from Warsaw University in 1959, he is also a graduate of the prestigious National Film School in Łódź (1962), and has directed more than twenty films since his 1960 début ‘The Menacing Eye’. In 1967 he was awarded the Golden Bear prize for his film ‘Le Départ’, and a year later he won the Special Prize in the 13th edition of Seminci with ‘Barrier’. He has participated in the Cannes competition on numerous occasions, with films such as ‘King, Queen, Knave’ (1972), ‘The Shout’ (1978, winner of the Grand Jury Prize), ‘Moonlighting’ (1982, award for best screenplay), ‘Success is the Best Revenge’ (1984), ‘Torrents of Spring’ (1989) or ‘Four Nights With Anna’ (2008), which marked his return to Poland after 17 years living in Los Angeles, where he painted in a figurative, expressionist mode and occasionally acted in films. He received the Golden Lion award for Lifetime Achievement at the 2016 Venice Film Festival and ‘EO’ (2022) earned him the Cannes Festival Jury Prize.