Possession

Andrzej Zulawski's 1981 psychosexual nightmare Possession returns, presented in a 4K restoration.

Sam Neill (Hunt for the Wilderpeople) plays Mark, who has returned home to West Berlin, where his wife Anna (in a fearlessly manic performance by Isabelle Adjani) awaits a divorce. As he worries about their son Bob – under the neglectful care of Anna – and in the midst of heightening tension between the former couple, Mark hires a private investigator to follow her. But without warning, a frightening discovery is made in her bedroom, causing a domino effect of hysteria, doppelgängers, and bodily fluids to unravel with no end in sight.

Written during a real-life divorce experienced by Zulawski, Possession is a whirlwind of intense, surrealistic strife carried by a tremendously committed Neill and Adjani, who won Best Actress for her performance at the 34th Cannes Film Festival.

“Zulawski's grand and shivery art-therapy hallucination, a burlesque farrago of domestic dramas played close and fast in a distinctively Polish register.” — Fernando F. Croce, CinePassion

“In much the same way that Possession blurs and blends genres, it also inextricably entangles the personal and the political.” — Budd Wilkins, Slant Magazine

“That the film is much more than a gawk-at-it freak show is testament to Zulawski's talent for making even the most exaggerated behavior resonate with pointed and potent emotion.” — Keith Uhlich, Time Out