ESSENTIAL KILLING

Somewhere in the deserts of Arabia: a wordless lone combatant (Vincent Gallo) is taken prisoner in the course of a gunfire exchange. Following his rendition to Europe, he goes through torture and isolation. An accident gives him a chance to flee. Pursued by police and military, the disorientated fugitive then wanders through a bitterly cold, wholly unfamiliar winter landscape. Finally, gravely injured and enfeebled, he chances upon a remote farmstead.
Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski’s latest film opens with the USA, at war with international terrorism and basic principles of human rights, hunting down a man afflicted by hunger, exhaustion and hallucinations. As the film progresses the victim increasingly struggles against his unbridled fear and the hopelessness of his situation. The remarkable visual compositions interweave the symbolic power of grand images of nature with a nail-biting, politically topical narrative in which killing becomes essential to personal survival.