#437 - Jerzy Skolimowski & Ewa Piaskowska on EO and Nikyatu Jusu & Nikkia Moulterie on Nanny

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring two conversations: the first with director Jerzy Skolimowski and co-writer Ewa Piaskowska on the NYFF60 selection, EO, and the second with director Nikyatu Jusu and producer Nikkia Moulterie on the ND/NF51 selection Nanny. At age 84, legendary director Jerzy Skolimowski has directed one of his spryest, most visually inventive films, following the travels of a peripatetic donkey named EO. After being removed from the only life he’s ever known in a traveling circus, EO begins a journey across the Polish and Italian countryside, experiencing cruelty and kindness, captivity and freedom. Skolimowski imagines the animal’s mesmerizing journey as an ever-shifting interior landscape, marked by absurdity and warmth in equal measure, putting the viewer in the unique perspective of the protagonist. Skolimowski has constructed his own bold vision about the follies of human nature, seen from the ultimate outsider’s perspective. EO, a New York Times Critic's Pick, is now playing in our theaters. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/eo Next, we’re revisiting a conversation from the 51st New Directors/New Films with Nanny director Nikyatu Jusu and producer Nikkia Moulterie. A riveting Anna Diop commands nearly every frame of director Nikyatu Jusu’s feature debut, a breakout at this year’s Sundance, where it won the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize. In this psychologically complex fable of displacement tinged with supernatural horror, Diop plays Aisha, a woman who recently emigrated from Senegal and is hired to care for the adorable daughter of an affluent couple (Michelle Monaghan and Morgan Spector) living in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood. Increasingly unsettled by the family’s volatile home life, though desperate to make enough money to bring over her young son from Senegal, Aisha begins to unravel, finding her life in America to be more nightmare than dream. Mixing domestic melodrama with American genre elements and West African folklore, Nanny is a spellbinding experience that defies expectation. Nanny, a New York Times Critic's Pick, is now playing in our theaters for one week only, with a special holiday promotion: buy one ticket, get one free for all screenings through November 27. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/nanny