DIRECTOR: Andrzej Zulawski
PRODUCER: Marie-Laure Reyre
PRODUCTION CO: Oliane Productions, Marianne Productions, Soma Film Produktion
SCREENPLAY: Andrzej Zulawski, Frederic Tuten
PHOTOGRAPHY: Bruno Nuytten
EDITOR: Marie-Sophie Dubus, Suzanne Lang-Willar
MUSIC: ​Andrzej Korzynski
WITH: Isabelle Adjani (Anna/Helen), Sam Neill (Mark), Margit Carstensen (Margit Gluckmeister), Heinz Bennent (Heinrich), Johanna Hofer (Heinrich's mother), Carl Duering (Detective), Shaun Lawton (Zimmermann), Michael Hogben (Bob)

​FESTIVALS: ​Cannes

REVIEW

“Polish writer-director Andrei Zulawski remains a controversial figure among cinephiles. Working first in Poland and later in France, his no-holds-barred filmmaking has generated a number of unnerving works from various genres: absurdist science fiction that fuses Tarkovsky and Herzog, Kafkaesque black comedy-cum-war film, and sanguinary melodrama. Topping them all is this feverish character study of a man who comes unglued when his wife leaves him. Here Zulawski blends Polanski-esque uncanny and Bergmanian psychodrama with the then-burgeoning subgenre of body horror associated with Alien and early Cronenberg. In addition, the setting – a grim Berlin neighborhood, near the Berlin Wall – suggests that the film may also be a particularly abject political allegory. The nightmarish result became an immediate cult classic, even though it was shorn of so much of its sex and violence for its initial US release that it lost a third of its running time. This re-release of the full-length version gives audiences a chance to marvel at the fearless performances by Sam Neill and especially Isabelle Adjani as both the faithless wife and her doppelganger.”

​– David Pendleton, Harvard Film Archive

“Possession was shot in West Berlin in the summer of 1980. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German capital was transformed…” – Possession – the locations then and now (YouTube)

Interview with Andrzej Zulawksi on the making of Possession
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FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Palmerston North
​Wednesday, 01 May, 6.00pm

Dunedin     
Wednesday, 29 May, 7.30pm

Queenstown 
Tuesday, 18 June, 8.00pm

Whanganui    
Monday, 01 July, 7.00pm

Hamilton     
Monday, 22 July, 6.30pm

New Plymouth  
Wednesday, 31 July, 6.00pm​

Canterbury
Monday, 19 August, 7.00pm

​Auckland      
Monday, 23 September, 6.15pm 

​Wellington     
Monday, 04 November, 6.15pm
CULT CLASSICS selection >>