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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

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