10 Films to Watch if You Like: EO

How many other films about a donkey have won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and been nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film? Cinema Paradiso takes a closer look at Jerzy Skolimowski's EO.

Towards the end of 1966, director Jerzy Skolimowski received a phone call from the editor of the prestitigious French film journal, Cahiers du Cinéma. He was informed that his second feature, Walkover, had come second in Cahiers's annual critics' poll. Out of curiosity, he asked what had won and quickly arranged a screening of Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar (1966).

Inspired by a passage in Fedor Dostoevsky's The Idiot, deceptively simply fable about a donkey made such an impression on the 28 year-old Pole that he shed a tear in a cinema for the first time in his life. Comparing the experience to being 'like a lesson from the old master', Skolimowski took heed 'that the animal character can move the audience even stronger than the greatest performance by the human being'. Fifty-five years later, he reaffirmed the point with his own donkey tale, EO (2022).

A Tale of Two Donkeys

Opening on a farm in the Pyrenees, Au hasard Balthazar provides a rustic realist link between Georges Rouquier's Farrebique, 1946 and Raymond Depardon's Modern Life, 2008). Adopting a donkey foal, a young boy called Jacques names it Balthazar during a baptism ceremony performed with his sisters and classmate, Marie. Unfortunately, one of the girls dies and, when the family moves away, the farm passes to Marie's teacher father (Philippe Asselin). He allows the farmhands to work the animal hard and Balthazar runs away after being involved in an accident.

The donkey returns to the farm, however, where the now teenage Marie (Anne Wiazemsky) tries to prevent him from being given away to the local baker (François Sullerot). She is distressed that the creature is maltreated by Gérard (François Lafarge), the delivery boy who is also the head of a gang of small-time crooks. He is jealous of Marie's affection for Balthazar and coerces her into a violent relationship.

When the police question Gérard about a murder, he tries to pin the blame on Arnold (Jean-Claude Guilbert), an alcoholic who takes care of Balthazar when he falls dangerously ill. Disliking being used by Arnold to take tourists on mountain treks, Balthazar runs away to join a circus. However, Arnold comes to see the show and drags the animal home.

Shortly afterwards, Arnold inherits a fortune from an uncle, only to suffer a fatal head injury after falling off Balthazar while riding home from a party. A miller (Pierre Klossowski) buys the donkey at market and drives it hard. He also offers sanctuary to Marie after she escapes from Gérard, but she soon returns to her parents. She is visited by Jacques (Walter Green), who has come to settle a dispute over farm revenues owed to his father. Marie resists his entreaties, however, and has to be rescued by Jacques and Balthazar after being abducted by Gérard and his gang.

Not long after Marie leaves for a fresh start, her father dies and Gérard steals Balthazar to carry contraband across the Spanish border. He is ambushed by customs officials, however, and Balthazar is shot during the resulting skirmish. As morning comes, the wounded creature lies down in the dust, surrounded by sheep, whose bleats and jangling bells break the silence.

By contrast with this mournful scenario, EO is first seen in the red strobe light of a circus tent, where he performs nightly with Kasanadra (Sandra Drzymalska), who rewards his tricks with treats and plenty of fussing. Owner Wasyl (Maciej Stepniak) adopts a heavier handed approach, though, cracking a whip to get EO to pull a cartload of rubbish to the tip.

Wasyl's cruelty doesn't go unnoticed and EO and two camels are confiscated by an animal rights group. Kassandra is devastated, but EO is rewarded with a garland of carrots when he is billeted at a new stable complex. He soon finds himself pulling a hay cart, while the horses are pampered. But his stay is cut short when he is shipped off to a sanctuary, where he gives rides to visiting special needs children.

While enjoying the attention, EO pines for Kassandra and becomes unsettled when she pays a nocturnal visit to give him a carrot muffin for his birthday. Kicking his way out of his pen, EO escapes into the woods, where he watches frogs and spiders going about their business. He also sees foxes scurrying and hears wolves howling, as hunters prowl with laser-sight rifles.

Arriving at an abandoned building, EO wanders through a tunnel filled with screeching bats. As the image reddens, the camera swoops past wind turbines on a hill, as the donkey grazes contentedly. Wandering into the nearby town, EO is busy watching some goldfish in a large tank when he is tethered to the rear of a fire engine. He's soon untied, however, by some exuberant football fans and sidles over to the pitch where a big derby is being played.

In the last minute, a penalty is awarded to the away team and EO becomes an instant hero by braying as the kick is taken so that the ball sails over the bar. Adopted as a mascot, he leads the procession back into town. But the celebrations prove too noisy and he leaves the clubhouse, only to be attacked by rival supporters.

EO is treated by a vet at a fur farm, where he recovers sufficiently to pull a cart piled with cages containing emaciated foxes. Sensing the animals' distress, EO kicks the keeper in the head and is sold with a number of horses to an Italian salami factory - a sobering detail that brings to mind Nikolaus Geyrhalter's exceptional documentary, Our Daily Bread (2005). Mateo the driver (Mateusz Kosciukiewicz) is unhappy at having to transport a donkey, but sets off with loud music blaring. He's murdered by migrants at a service station and EO is smuggled away from police attending the scene by Vito (Lorenzo Zurzolo), a priest on his way to say mass for the Countess (Isabelle Huppert).

While she informs the cleric that she is selling up and returning to France, EO grazes on the lawn. Determined to find Kassandra, he wanders out of the villa gardens and crosses a bridge over a raging sluice. However, he falls in with a herd of cattle being driven towards a slaughterhouse and isn't spotted by the drovers.

The Man Behind the Mule

Born in Lódz in 1938, Jerzy Skolimowski was still a boy when he was pulled from the rubble of a bombed house in Warsaw during the Second World War. He also helped his mother hide a Jewish family after his father was executed for his activities with the Resistance and would later claim that his wartime experiences have informed a number of his films as a director.

A joker who was frequently expelled from school, Skolimowski went to college to avoid military service and took up boxing while studying ethnography, history, and literature. An accomplished drummer, he became friends with composer Krzysztof Komeda, who introduced him to such leading lights in the Polish film industry as directors Roman Polanski and Andrzej Munk, and pin-up actor Zbigniew Cybulski. With a play and several stories and poems already to his credit, Skolimowski enrolled at the Lódz Film School after collaborating on the screenplays for Andrzej Wajda's Innocent Sorcerors (1960) and Polanski's Knife in the Water (1962).

Once again, however, he found conforming a problem. But, while flunking his classes, Skolimowski completed what would be his debut feature, Identification Marks: None (1964). Shot on strips of celluloid given to him for student assignments, this was a deliberately subversive calling card that announced Skolimowski as not only a writer-director, but also as an actor, as he took the leading role of Andrzej Leszezyc, who was destined to become something of a Polish equivalent to the Antoine Doinel character played by Jean-Pierre Léaud in François Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959), Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1979).

Heavily influenced by the early films of the Czech New Wave, Identfication Marks is also an experiment in the plan séquence style of film-making, with the entire picture requiring just 35 long takes to show how the old Poland is inexorably being replaced by the new. With Antoni Nurzynski's camera almost constantly on the move to reflect Leszczyc's headlong pelt into another dead end, this is an audacious attempt to use a character's milieu to divulge his psychological state and then blame it entirely on that very environment. Yet this also contains personal elements, as extracts from Skolimowski's poetry are intoned over close-ups of Leszczyc's face, which betrays the toll that remaining outside the system has exerted upon him.

Complete with a sly score by Krzysztof Komeda, Barrier (1966) was planned as the next instalment of the Leszczyc chronicle. However, Skolimowski was denied permission to cast himself and he reworked the material to accommodate Jan Nowicki, who had been imposed upon him as his anonymous new hero. Skolimowski embarked upon the project without a completed script and allowed his cast to improvise dialogue designed to mock the film industry's obsession with socialist realist stories of wartime sacrifice and courage.

Returning to Poland after shooting Le Départ (1967) in Belgium, Skolimowski produced Hands Up!, only for the censors to withhold it. He later admitted that he knew he was 'digging a hole in the system' and was surprised to have been allowed to complete what was essentially 'a silent scream' intended to alert '32 million Poles about what is wrong'. In 1980, however, Skolimowski (who had reprised the role of Andrzej Leszezyc) was invited home to update the picture and it premiered at Cannes, having been shorn of almost a third of its original footage and supplemented by the addition of a new colour prologue filmed in London and Beirut.

Set in a London bathhouse as the Sixties ceased to swing, Deep End (1970) makes considerable demands on its audience. This is a complex and compelling mix of rite of passage, social realism, psychological drama, and sex farce that - prior to its restoration by the BFI - had long been snafued in co-production tangles that had kept it from being seen since its box-office performance failed to reflect the almost universally enthusiastic reviews.

Fresh from leaving school, bashful 15 year-old John Moulder-Brown is hired as an attendant by Newford baths manager Karl Ludwig Lindt and entrusted to the care of Jane Asher, a redhead eight years his senior who is lusted after by stoker Dieter Eppler and swimming instructor Karl Michael Vogler. Fresh from an encounter with lusty private bath client Diana Dors, Moulder-Brown tries to fathom Asher's love for fiancé Christopher Sandford and their connection to a Soho strip club.

Despite being mostly filmed in Munich's Bavaria Studios, Deep End was Skolimowski's second UK picture, after the misfiring Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation The Adventures of Gerard (1970). He would return here to shoot The Shout (1978) and Moonlighting (1982).

Produced by Jeremy Thomas, The Shout should be regarded as a key item in the British horror canon. In a nod to Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), the film opens in an asylum, as Alan Bates scores a cricket match and reminisces about a sinister incident in the English countryside with Tim Curry (who is playing Robert Graves, the author on whose short story the picture is based and who was recently played by Tom Hughes in William Nunez's The Laureate, 2021). As the flashbacking action progresses, it becomes apparent that several of its key characters resemble Bates's fellow inmates, but nothing can detract from the chilling conviction of a tale that seems to be rooted in some awful truth.

When not playing the church organ in his idyllic Devon village, musician John Hurt devotes his time to recording everyday sounds and electronically manipulating them for his avant-garde compositions. Despite being happily married Susannah York, he is having an affair with neighbour Carol Drinkwater and it is while returning from a tryst that he encounters the itinerant Bates, who informs him that he has just returned from 18 years in the Australian Outback.

Written in just three weeks, the screenplay for Skolimowski's Moonlighting won a prize at Cannes. Filmed in the director's own West London home and featuring Polish builders who were actually involved in renovation work, it offers a teasing blend of fiction and documentary that is made all the more poignant because it reflects Skolimowski's own concerns about his homeland following the imposition of martial law in 1981.

Hired to renovate diplomat Jerzy Skolimowski's Kensington home, Polish builder Jeremy Irons has to withhold news of General Jaruzelski's clamp down on the Solidarity protests to ensure his crew keep their minds on the task in hand. Ironically, he turns into a petty tyrant himself, whose crimes are compounded by the fact that he is forced to resort to shoplifting to feed cohorts who are essentially under house arrest.

Photographed in the social realist manner by Tony Pierce-Roberts to reinforce the chaos and claustrophobia of the setting, the mix of satire and gravity is beautifully judged. Exploring notions of language, exploitation, oppression, and the illusory nature of freedom, this is an underrated picture that continues to provide telling insights into the migrant experience.

Complete with a lengthy period away from directing to concentrate on painting, Skolimowski's career has not all been plain sailing. Indeed, there have been plenty of sleepers and misfires along the way, including King Queen Knave (1972), Success Is the Best Revenge (1984), The Lightship (1985), Torrents of Spring (1989), Thirty-Door Key (1991), Four Nights With Anna (2008), Essential Killing (2010), and 11 Minutes (2015). However, he has also indulged in the odd spot of freelance acting, notably in Volker Schlöndorff's Circle of Deceit (1981), Taylor Hackford's White Nights (1985), Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! (1996), Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls (2000), David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises (2007), Renzo Martinelli's Siege Lord 2: Day of the Siege, and Joss Wheedon's Avengers Assemble (both 2012). His next credit will take him full circle, as he has collaborated on the screenplay of Roman Polanski's forthcoming black comedy, The Palace,

How to Train Your Donkey

Redemption through suffering was a common theme in the films of Robert Bresson, as Cinema Paradiso users can discover by ordering Diary of a Country Priest (1951), A Man Escaped (1956), and The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962). Both Marie and the eponymous donkey are victimised in Au hasard Balthazar, with the latter's travails being dictated by the Seven Deadly Sins. Cognizant of the influence of Catholicism on Bresson's cinema, some have detected parallels between Balthazar's progress and the Stations of the Cross that took Jesus Christ to Calvary.

Even non-believers, however, will recognise in the story the brevity and brutality of life and the cruelty of which humans are capable. Yet, Bresson also explores notions of liberty and fraternity, notably in the charming childhood sequences. No wonder Jean-Luc Godard declared, 'Every one who sees this film will be absolutely astonished...because this film is really the world in an hour and a half.' Not everyone was so keen, however. Ingmar Bergman complained, 'I didn't understand a word of it, it was so completely boring...A donkey, to me, is completely uninteresting, but a human being is always interesting.' Critic Pauline Kael similarly refused to mince her words. 'Considered a masterpiece by some,' she wrote, 'but others may find it painstakingly tedious and offensively holy'.

While Balthazar is central to the action, Bresson is as much interested in the human characters. Consequently, he never presents events from the donkey's perspective, unlike Jerzy Skolimowski in EO, who insisted that cinematographer Michal Dymak took into account the size and positioning of a donkey's eyes in framing the point of view shots. He also opted for a vignettish rather than a linear approach to suggest an asinine mindset and boldly incorporated dreams and flashbacks to allow the audience to share in the animal's emotions.

Having returned to Poland after a prolonged period in California, Skolimowski and wife Ewa Piaskowska (who is also his producer and co-writer) moved into a 19th-century hunting lodge in the Masurian region that had once been part of both Germany and Russia. Surrounded by wildlife in the forest, the pair decided to make a film with an animal protagonist. 'We eliminated cats and dogs,' Skolimowski told one interviewer. 'There are too many movies about cats and dogs already. But otherwise - pigs, sheep, cows - it was all open.'

The couple settled on a donkey while spending Christmas in Sicily. They attended the Presepe Vivente festival in a small village in which the locals re-enact the Nativity story. 'They keep some old costumes,' Skolimowski explained, 'and they perform the life of ancient times. There were many attractions and people were walking from one attraction to the other. At the very end of the tour was a quite large barn from which enormous noise was heard, a cacophony of animal sounds. When we entered it, we saw St Joseph and St Mary, holding the baby Jesus and surrounded by several dozens of different animals, starting with chickens and geese on the floor, and then the pigs and sheep and cows, and an enormous bull, all of them making incredible noises because of such an ensemble of sixty, seventy, or eighty animals all sounding their joy or anger.'

In the midst of this joyous chaos, however, one creature made an indelible impression. 'I noticed that at the very end corner,' the Polish veteran recalled, 'separated from everybody else, there was standing a donkey. Lone, motionless, soundless, observing what was going on with his ears up. And you know, looking very peacefully, very thoughtfully, with these enormous eyes, observing what's going on.' Deeply moved by the sense of melancholy, Skolimowski felt the donkey's eyes were 'like mirrors into the universe' and he knew he had found his subject.

Bored with the traditional three-act structure, the pair sought to dispense with long passages of dialogue and devise a new method of narration by privileging an animal's perspective. Focussing on a donkey would allow Skolimowski and Piaskowska to continue the experiment in non-linearity that they had started in 11 Minutes. Suddenly inspired, he phoned home and assembled a crew to shoot the festive pageant, with a view to using it as the finale to his story. Within 48 hours, the footage was in the can.

As he flew home, however, Skolimowski realised that he now needed to find a donkey dopplegänger for his Sicilian discovery and luckily managed to recruit two of the few pale grey Sardinian donkeys in Poland, a male and a female. 'Tako is the action star,' Piaskowska revealed. 'When EO is crossing rivers, or walking through the forest, all those sequences, that's Tako. Like Tom Cruise, he does all his own stunts.' As Skolimowski clarified, 'when we needed a beautiful close-up of EO's eyes or nose, then it's Hola. About 80 percent of the movie is those two. But for the ending of the film, in Italy, we didn't want to transport them, because that's too stressful for them, so we cast two other replacement couples: Marietta and Ettore, and Rocco and Mela. The remaining 20 percent of the movie, it's the Italian donkeys.' See if you can spot the difference by renting EO from Cinema Paradiso now on high-quality DVD or Blu-ray.

Piaskowska continued, 'This is essentially a road movie with a donkey playing the lead, so the film was almost entirely shot on location.' Because of Covid, however, there was a 26-month gap between the first shots grabbed in the Sicilian town of Custonaci and the final scenes filmed on the outskirts of Rome in March 2022. 'In between,' she reflected, 'the world became a wholly different place.' Nevertheless, the Polish odyssey took Tako and Hola to Wilanow Palace outside Warsaw, the unspoilt province of Podkarpackie, and the historic stables at Mazury.

One of the most challenging segments was the opening circus sequence with its red lighting and strobe effects. Skolimowski had read online about an itinerant performer who travelled around northern Italy with a donkey who played dead with its four legs in the air until its owner whispered in its ear to bring it back to life. After much searching, Skolimowski found the duo and their performance (on a specially constructed Italian circus ring set) was slotted into the finished film by editor Agniszka Glinka.

She also had a crucial role to play in building the action around the close-ups of Hola. As Skolimowski wanted to tell EO's story through his eyes, he and Glinka drew on the editorial technique devised in 1920s Moscow by Lev Kuleshov. As those who have read Cinema Paradiso's A History of Soviet Silent Cinema will know, Kuleshov focussed on a man's impassive face and coaxed the viewer into believing he was registering hunger or pity by cutting between shots of a bowl of soup and a dead child. Skolimowski and Glinka achieved the same effect by following an image of EO's eye with a reverse angle shot depicting what Hola was looking at. 'It's very ambiguous and very mysterious,' the director confided in one interview, 'but definitely a different point of view.'

As EO had no dialogue (apart the occasional hee-haw, hence his name), Pawel Mykietyn was asked to think like a donkey in composing a score that was effectively an inner monologue that would complement the visuals and Radoslaw Ochnio's sound design. 'Our hope,' Skolimowski explained, 'is that you start to identify with the animal and see things from their perspective.' The donkey, therefore, becomes an innocent witness to the more grotesque aspects of modern society and the vileness of human nature at its worst. 'We look at the human beings through the eyes of the animal, who is not judging or commenting,' the film-maker expounded. 'They have this very specific melancholic look, which could be interpreted in many different ways, because it doesn't show anger or pleasure or any kind of reaction. It is ambiguous enough for the audience to put their own interpretation on how the animal looks at the human beings, and how he is judging them.'

It's a bold approach and the fact that it works so poignantly and trenchantly says much about Skolimowski's audacity as a director and the closeness of his relationship with his four-legged stars. Glad to be working with untrained donkeys, Skolimowski spent lots of time between set-ups getting Hola and Toka used to the sound of his voice. He also tried to establish eye contact so that they would trust him and this sense of 'coexistence' meant that the pair usually did what was asked of them. Being donkeys, however, they could be stubborn and Skolimowski had to resort to his secret weapon - carrots. But even these tasty treats failed to impress Marietta, who could only be cajoled by croissants.

'The animals were the VIPs on this set,' Piaskowska admitted. 'They had the biggest trailer. Jerzy didn't even have a trailer because it was a low-budget movie. The donkeys were the last to arrive on set and the first to leave. And in picking the entire crew, we made sure we had people who clearly love animals. There was no shouting, no raised voices on set. Everyone had to dance around the animals. It actually made the whole experience incredibly pleasant and joyful.'

As Piaskowska joked, 'There were certainly no script readings, no discussions about motivation - "Why does my character cross the bridge now?"' However, in the scene in which EO looks at the goldfish in the shop window, Toka caught sight of his own reflection and started to bray. This improvisation made the final cut. So did a number of dream and memory sequences, which showed how much EO was missing Kassandra.

Having often seen his dogs dream, Skolimowski was convinced that donkeys would also have an inner life. The most dramatic of these cutaways centres on the robot dog that EO imagines after being beaten by the football hooligans. While this bizarre beast could simply be the product of a tormented mind, it also posits the grim prospect of humanity causing all wildlife to become extinct and having to rely on artificial pets for company.

'This was the main aim behind EO,' Skolimowski divulged, 'to make people understand how humanity mistreats animals, including the barbaric form of industrial farming. Those animals are kept in terrible conditions and don't have a life. It is torture, from birth until their slaughter. I hope that EO shakes some part of the audience.' He and Piaskowska consciously cut down on their meat consumption during the shoot, as did several members of the crew. 'I hope some part of the audience will do the same' he concluded. 'Maybe one day, industrial farming will become illegal and cease completely. This would be the greatest thing that EO could achieve.'

Donkey's Years

According to Skolimowski, 'An animal doesn't know it is acting. They just behave.' In which case, Tako and Hola are the latest in a line of well-behaved donkeys on the silver screen. For example, every Palm Sunday sequence in the filmed versions of the Gospel story has featured Jesus riding on a donkey. Whether they're carrying Enrique Irazoqui in Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew (1964), Max von Sydow in George Stevens's The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), or Robert Powell in Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977), a donkey walks placidly through the cheering crowds.

Donkeys can also be found in Christmas stables. During his time at Disney, Don Bluth drew on a Charles Tazewell story to put a new spin on the telling of the First Christmas in The Small One (1978), which can be found on the 1990 Countdown to Christmas compilation. A donkey named Bo, Ruth the sheep, and Dave the dove similarly find themselves in the midst of the Bethlehem scene after leaving their dreary lives in a distant village in Timothy Reckart's animated adventure, The Star (2017). Turning to live-action, as the title suggests, Archie the kicking pet is consigned to the margins after teacher Martin Clunes loses his memory in Debbie Isitt's much-maligned romp, Nativity 3: Dude, Where's My Donkey?! (2014).

One suspects that Christopher Robin never asked this question of the inhabitants of Hundred Acre Wood. But the perpetually gloomy Eeyore is a much-loved member of the coterie created by A.A. Milne. Voiced by RalphWright, he ambles into the Disney shorts Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too! (1974), and Winnie the Pooh and a Day For Eeyore (1983), which are all available from Cinema Paradiso on the compilation, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (2002). He can also be found in such animated features as The Tigger Movie (2000), Piglet's Big Movie (2003), Winnie the Pooh: Springtime With Roo (2004), Pooh's Heffalump Movie (2005), and Winnie the Pooh (2011). Also look out for Eeyore in Marc Forster's live-action biopic, Christopher Robin, and see if you can spot his cameo in Phil Johnston's Ralph Breaks the Internet (both 2018).

Younger viewers will warm to the characters in Dawdle the Donkey (1996-2004), which follows Dawdle (Josie Lawrence) after she hits the road after houses are built on the orchard where she used to live. She makes new friends along the way, including Rolar Polar Bear (David Jason) and Archie the Cat (Andy Turvey). And, of course, there is Donkey, the wise ass voiced by Eddie Murphy opposite Mike Myers in Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson's masterly revisionist fairytale, Shrek (2001), and its sequels, Shrek 2 (2004), Shrek the Third (2007), and Shrek Forever (2010). Rumour has it that work has begun on Shrek 5 and a Donkey spin-off.

A talking mule had taken Hollywood by storm in the 1950s. Given the popularity of the sitcom, Mister Ed (1961-66), it's surprising that Universal hasn't seen fit to release a UK boxed set containing Francis (1950), Francis Goes to the Races (1951), Francis Goes to West Point (1952). Francis Covers the Big Town (1953), Francis Joins the WACS (1954), Francis in the Navy (1955), and Francis in the Haunted House (1956), as they are all highly entertaining. The animal's voice was provided by Chill Wills, who also sang Stan Laurel's bass part in 'The Trail of the Lonesome Pine' in James W. Horne's Way Out West (1937), in which Laurel and Hardy are accompanied by a mule named Dinah.

As with Au hasard Balthazar, Christian sentiments echo around Never Take No For an Answer (1951), Ralph Smart's adaptation of Paul Gallico's 'The Small Miracle', which sees nine year-old war orphan Peppino attempt to smuggle his ailing donkey, Violeta, into the church of St Francis in Assisi in the hope that his prayers will be heard. There is no excuse for this not being on disc. But Cinema Paradiso can bring you another poignant story driven by faith, Richard Heap's The Runaways (2018). When father Richard Addy dies, siblings Molly Windsor, Macy Shackleton, and Rhys Connah take two of his Whitby beach donkeys and, steering clear of grasping uncle Lee Boardman, embark upon a journey across North Yorkshire to find their estranged singer mother, Tara Fitzgerald.

Speaking of quests, several Sancho Panzas have trotted loyally along on donkeys in the various adaptations of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote. Cinema Paradiso users can enjoy Yuri Tolubeyev in Grigori Kozintsev's 1957 version, Bob Hoskins in Peter Yates's 2000 reading, and James Coco in Arthur Hiller's 1972 reworking of the Broadway musical, Man of La Mancha. Unfortunately, the 1992 edit of Orson Welles's unfinished take on Don Quixote isn't available on disc in this country. Arthouse fans must also be wishing they could rent the likes of Albert Lamorisse's Bim (1951), Tengiz Abuladze and Rezo Chkheidze's Magdana's Donkey (1955), and Chico Pereira's wonderful documentary, Dokeyote (2017). But there's always the compensation of the lovesick donkey who stands on a railway line and changes the entire complexion of the story in Emir Kusturica's Life Is a Miracle (2004).

And who could resist Jacques Demy's Donkey Skin (1970), which retells the Charles Perrault fairytale about a king (Jean Marais) who considers marrying his own daughter (Catherine Deneuve) after promising his dying queen that he would only wed someone who surpasses her beauty. Aided by the Lilac Fairy (Delphine Seyrig), however, the princess escapes the palace in the skin of her father's favourite donkey and takes a job as a humble pig keeper in a neighbouring kingdom. What a shame that Cinema Paradiso users can't make this classic part of a Gallic double bill with Caroline Vignal's My Donkey, My Lover & I (2020), which follows the misadventures of teacher Laure Calamy after she follows her married lover to the Cévennes National Park and is paired on a trek with a jack named Patrick with a mind of his own.

We suggest animal lovers look away from the donkey hunt in Ruben Östlund's class satire, Triangle of Sadness (2022), which followed its Palme d'or victory at Cannes by landing three Oscar nominations. Having been marooned on a desert island after their luxury yacht is attacked by pirates, a group of rich tourists has to stalk and kill a donkey for food. Two puppeteers hid in a bush to operate the model being bludgeoned with a rock, while CGI supplemented the gruesome scene. It originally ran for seven minutes, but test audiences were so appalled that it was reduced to three.

Despite the savagery of the sequence, Östlund is an equinophile. 'To me,' he told one reporter, 'the donkey is the court jester of the animal kingdom...their whole appearance is friendly, comical and ultimately sympathetic.' No doubt Martin McDonagh would agree, as Jenny the miniature donkey is a key character in the eight-time Oscar-nominated dramedy, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). 'Part of it is as silly and simple as I like cute animals on screen,' McDonagh revealed in an interview. 'and I always hope nothing bad happens to them...[donkeys] represent innocence. By the end, we almost start seeing [the story] through their eyes: how they observe the violence and craziness of this conflict between the two men.'

Jenny had never acted before and was a little nervous around Colin Farrell, whose character, Pádraic, turns to her for solace after best mate Colm (Brendan Gleeson) abruptly ends their friendship. Indeed, she kicked Farrell on the knee, but calmed down once stunt double Nosy Rosie appeared on set. By the end of the shoot, the Golden Globe-winning star had been won over. 'She was amazing,' he enthused. 'There's a scene where she comes in and starts nudging the box on the table with her nose - and there was nothing in the box to entice her. That was pure instinct. I was a big fan of some of her acting choices.' But that wasn't Jenny who made a guest appearance at the 95th Academy Awards, as she has now retired to a field in County Carlow and a local donkey named Dominic stood in for her.