Balthazar

Date:: 26 Feb 2026, 19:30–21:20

Age:

Type:

Place:: Cinema

Age restrictions: 18+

Robert Bresson’s poignant masterpiece about the wanderings of creatures large and small. Screening as part of the programme Animalistic Anomalous.

Au hasard Balthazar
1966, Robert Bresson

France
95 minutes, French with Russian subtitles

Starring: Anne Wiazemsky, François Lafarge, Philippe Asselin, Nathalie Joyaut

In their early youth, Jacques and Marie fall in love. They live in a village, go for walks, rock on swings, and get a pet—a little donkey they name Balthazar. But growing up leads to separation, and for various reasons, all the characters leave this mortal coil—including, of course, the donkey.

Shot from Balthazar, 1966

There is an expression that people no longer use, but it was said in the past; it is: the painting of feelings. That is what you are doing.

—Jean-Luc Godard to Robert Bresson, Cahiers du cinéma

Balthazar will not find a home for life and will pass from one owner to another: caring, indifferent, rude, cruel. His life on screen seems at once a form of imprisonment and a manifestation of Christian humility and purity, so crystal clear that encountering it inevitably breaks the heart.

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