Starting this fall, Criterion will proudly join with Janus Films in presenting Janus Contemporaries, a new line of home-video editions of first-run theatrical releases, fresh from theaters, following their streaming premieres on the Criterion Channel.
Coming October 17: the Cannes winner and Oscar nominee EO, an expressionistic tour de force from legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski in which a Polish donkey is set free on a hero’s journey; Jafar Panahi’s No Bears, the new film from one of the world’s great cinema artists, who continues to make sly, self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom, despite being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government for more than a decade; and Louis Garrel’s The Innocent, the award-winning movie—part crime thriller, part romantic comedy—that shows the dangerous and outlandish lengths two men go to for the women they love.
EO
Legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski created one of his freest and most visually inventive films yet with this story of a gray donkey named EO. After being removed from an itinerant circus, EO begins a trek across the countryside, experiencing cruelty and kindness from a cast of characters including an Italian countess (Isabelle Huppert) and a Polish soccer team. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature, and featuring stunning cinematography by Michał Dymek coupled with Paweł Mykietyn’s resonant score, EO presents the follies and triumphs of humankind from the perspective of its four-legged protagonist on a quest for freedom. [Read Davy’s review of the movie.]
- The Making of “EO,” a new conversation with writer-director Jerzy Skolimowski and writer-producer Ewa Piaskowska
- PLUS: All the Donkeys, an introduction to the six Sardinian donkeys who play EO
- Trailer
No Bears
One of the world’s great cinema artists, Jafar Panahi has been carefully crafting self-reflexive works about artistic, personal, and political freedom for the past three decades, despite being banned from filmmaking by the Iranian government since 2010. In No Bears—completed shortly before his imprisonment in 2022—Panahi plays a fictionalized version of himself, a dissident filmmaker who relocates to a rural border town to direct a film remotely in nearby Turkey and finds himself embroiled in a local scandal. As he struggles to complete his feature, Panahi must confront the opposing pulls of tradition and progress, city and country, belief and evidence, as well as the universal desire to reject oppression.
- On Panahi’s Films, a new interview with filmmaker Ramin Bahrani about director Jafar Panahi’s work
- PLUS: Panahi Speaks from Prison
- Trailer
The Innocent
Part crime thriller, part romantic comedy, Louis Garrel’s The Innocent shows the dangerous and outlandish lengths two men go to for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, an aquarium educator whose mother, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), marries one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary, Michel (Roschdy Zem). Once on parole, Michel attempts to start a legitimate life but soon reverts to his old ways, eventually roping Abel into one of his schemes. Complicating matters is Clémence (Noémie Merlant), Abel’s brazen coworker, who convinces him to take part in the heist. Directing from a screenplay he cowrote (with Tanguy Viel and Naïla Guiguet), Garrel explores the comedic results of playacting’s intrusion into reality, as well as reality’s comedic tendency to transform us into what we never thought we could be.
- Meet the Filmmaker, a new interview with director Louis Garrel
- Trailer
