Essential Killing

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

2010 / 82min / DCP

A harrowing, relentless, and deeply ambiguous depiction of persecution and flight, Essential Killing stars Vincent Gallo as a man—perhaps a Taliban soldier, perhaps just a patsy caught up in the overzealous global War on Terror—shipped from Guantanamo to Eastern Europe, where an accident allows him to escape from captivity. Plunging into the snowy woods of Poland and fighting for survival, Gallo gives a feral and nearly wordless performance in a film that, in its focus on a protagonist driven hither-and-tither by events beyond their control, in many ways presages Skolimowski’s EO.

Part of Identification Marks: Films of Jerzy Skolimowski