dir. Roberta Eggers | USA, Canada, UK, Brazil 2015 | 90’ | + lecture before the screening

17th century. A family of Puritan settlers, excluded from society, lives in a remote area surrounded by forests. Soon, their faith and mutual trust will be put to the ultimate test. Eggers' Sundance-winning feature debut is a masterfully crafted horror film, hypnotising with its poetic naturalism: a disturbing tale of coming of age in the shadow of religious obsession, dressed in historical costume.

ROBERT EGGERS. RETRO[per]SPECTIVE

An American visionary of stylish horror, unapologetically paying homage to European cinema classics. An aesthete enamored with the past, unafraid to balance on the edge of cinematic exaggeration and good taste. Yet he never loses his form or creative discipline; with an extraordinary sense of image and sound, he builds the atmosphere of his cinematic stories.

He explores the boundaries of madness and loneliness. He searches for lost connections with nature in their most primitive manifestations. He looks into the eyes of hares and seagulls, follows a black goat deep into a dark forest. He turns people into wild dogs, drowns healthy senses in the raging waves of the ocean.

Spinning ghoulish fairy tales and evoking myths, he tells stories that are thoroughly contemporary: family dramas set indoors, Shakespearean tragedies, parables about initiation and growing up. His cinematic dreams awaken fears of what is hidden within us. He mixes good with evil. He digs up blood-soaked earth and brings to the surface what we would like to cover up, bury, and forget. He searches for truth in the past and universal meaning in history. Light blinds him, but he finds solace in darkness.

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The set of Robert Eggers' first three feature films will be complemented by a special screening of “Wilczyca” (“The She-Wolf”), a Polish horror film that connects the American director with... Upper Silesia.