The Norton Herrick Center presents POSSESSION as a Cosford Classic for Halloween screened on a 35mm film print. Filmed in a still-divided Berlin (in many of the same locations Wim Wenders would later use in WINGS OF DESIRE), POSSESSION is one of the most extreme marital breakup films ever created and a polarizing, notorious cult classic that’s only now starting to receive serious consideration. When the marriage of a couple played by Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani (who won Best Actress awards at Cannes and in the Césars, the French Oscars, for her intense performance) starts to go wrong, things escalate into the violent, surreal, and bizarre. Recalling David Cronenberg, Lars von Trier, and Ingmar Bergman, POSSESSION’s apocalyptic and overheated fantasy was influenced by the then-recent messy divorce of writer/director Andrzej Żulawski, the enfant terrible of Polish cinema.

Directed by Andrzej Żuławski.
West Germany. 127minutes. 35mm Film.
1981. English.