THE MILL AND THE CROSS
by Lech Majewski
synopsis
Pieter Bruegel’s 1564 epic masterpiece, The Procession to Calvary, portrays Jesus staggering to his crucifixion, lost in a panoramic landscape crowded with hundreds of villagers and red-caped horsemen. In depicting Jesus’ plight as one among many vignettes, while soldiers on horseback loom threateningly, Bruegel boldly transposes Christ’s passion and death to sixteenth-century Flanders—a time when the Belgian people were suffering terribly under brutal Spanish occupation.
Now Poland filmmaker Lech Majewski translates The Procession to Calvary into cinema, mischievously inviting the viewer to live inside the aesthetic universe of the painting as we watch it being created. As various lives unfold within the film frame, Bruegel, too, appears as a character, capturing shards of their desperate stories on his canvas-in-the-making.
international title: | The Mill and the Cross |
original title: | The Mill and the Cross |
country: | Sweden, Poland |
sales agent: | Wide Management |
year: | 2011 |
genre: | fiction |
directed by: | Lech Majewski |
film run: | 95' |
release date: | PL 18/03/2011, GR 24/04/2011, DE 24/11/2011, FR 28/12/2011, NL 01/03/2012, AT 02/03/2012, IT 30/03/2012, ES 30/11/2012 |
screenplay: | Lech Majewski, Michael Gibson |
cast: | Rutger Hauer, Michael York, Charlotte Rampling |
cinematography by: | Adam Sikora |
film editing: | Eliot Ems, Norbert Rudzik |
art director: | Katarzyna Sobanska-Strzalkowska, Marcel Slawinski |
costumes designer: | Dorota Roqueplo, Ewa Kochanska |
music: | Lech Majewski, Józef Skrzek |
production: | Angelus Silesius, Telewizja Polska (TVP) - Agencja Filmowa, Instytucja Filmowa Silesia Film, SupraFilmSp. z o.o., Arkana Studio, Odeon Film Studio, 24 Media, Piramida Film, Bokomotiv, Mastershot Studio |
backing: | Polish Film Institute |
distributor: | ITI Cinema, New Star, Neue Visionen Filmverleih GmbH, Dulac Distribution, A Contracorriente Films, Contact Film Cinematheek, Polyfilm Verleih, CG Home Video SRL, Surtsey Films |