12.07.22
Events
Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) / Director: Robert Bresson / Length: 95 min. / Language: French / Subtitles: Albanian, English / Entrance: FREE
This film is shown in cooperation with the Alliance Française de Pristina, the Embassy of France in Kosovo and IF Cinema.
In the French countryside near the Pyrenees, a baby donkey is adopted by young children - Jacques and his sisters, who live on a farm. They baptize the donkey (and christen it Balthazar) along with Marie, Jacques' childhood sweetheart. The donkey is given away to local farmhands who work it very hard. Years pass until Balthazar is involved in an accident and runs off, finding its way back to Marie, who is now a teenager.
Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly. Through Bresson’s unconventional approach to composition, sound, and narrative, this simple story becomes a moving parable about purity and transcendence.