Cannes Film Festival: Jury Prize for "Hi-Han", human tragedy through the animal condition

“I thank my donkeys.

Jerzy Skolimowski, 84, winner of the Jury Prize ex aequo for "Hi-Han", greeted the six animals who take turns for the same "role" in his film by stating the first name of each.

Absolute class of a great filmmaker to help the cause and animal abuse.

“Hi-Han” (“Eo” in Polish) is both the name of the donkey and of the film, screened at the start of the festival.

A gray donkey with such expressive eyes, surrounded by white spots, that many journalists joked about an interpretation prize for the Sardinian animal.

A donkey chased from a circus in Poland while he and his tamer, as the first scenes show, live in fusion.

But society has decided otherwise, animals are excluded from the tents, and Hi-Han's wandering begins through Poland and Italy.

A poetic ride, soft and hard, crazy, comical and terrible.

Jerzy Skolimowski already rewarded at Cannes in 1978 and 1982

Jerzy Skolimowski, 84, a pioneer of Polish cinema already awarded at Cannes in 1978 (Grand Prize for "The Sorcerer's Cry") and 1982 (Screenplay Prize for "Black Work", a masterpiece on immigration Polish underground in London), recounts the human tragedy through the animal condition.

Hi-Han, impassive, courageous, indestructible, will meet the Good, and especially the Evil.

The love of men and their absolute stupidity, their cruelty too.

A whole world seen through his eyes, sometimes his cries of joy or pain.

Pass Isabelle Huppert in the role of an Italian countess, but the humans remain in the background, and when they arrive at the first, the disaster announces.

Jerzy Skolimowski's remake of Robert Bresson's “Au chance Balthazar” (1966), already entirely centered around the wanderings of a donkey, but in today's increasingly industrialized and dehumanized world.

The old filmmaker sings of the breathtaking beauty of nature, of forests, of trees, of a majestic and silent world that man disfigures with his unspeakable cruelty.

A very dark and tender film of stunning beauty, “Hi-Han” begs us to respect each other.

And take note of the wickedness of the world.

Skolimowski possesses the poetic power of a prophet.

“Hi-Han” shares this prize with “Les Huit Montagnes”, an Italian feature film adapted from a novel which won the Medicis eranger in France.

The saga of a lifelong friendship between two young Italians from the mountains around Turin, from childhood to love affairs, to the troubles and dramas of adulthood.

A very beautiful humanist film.

"Hi Han",