We’re pleased to welcome Jerzy Skolimowski and his partner and collaborator Ewa Piaskowska for a preview of their latest film, Essential Killing. A triumph at the Venice Film Festival, the film is an intense and disturbing thriller about survival. In a brilliant, dialogue-free performance that won him the Best Actor prize at Venice, Vincent Gallo plays Mohammed, a possible Taliban member who is captured by American forces in the desert. He’s tortured and questioned before being transported to Eastern Europe, where he manages to escape into a hostile, snow-bound landscape. Forced into extreme survival mode, he must kill anyone and everything that strays into his path. ‘This is a story about man and nature,’ Skolimowski has said, playing down the film’s political dimension. There will be much to discuss in the post-screening Q&A.

Preview courtesy of Element Pictures.