Lobster – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

The Lobster

• directed by Yorgos Lantimos, France / Greece / Netherlands / Ireland / UK 2015, 118'

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In the near future, no one is allowed to be lonely, so according to the new law by the city authorities, every single person is sent to a hotel where they have 45 days to meet a new partner. If they fail to find love within this time, they will be turned into an animal of their choice. David (Colin Farrell) arrives at the hotel after being abandoned by his wife and tries to find himself in the new reality. One day he meets a member of the rebellion living in the woods (Rachel Weisz), who will change his life.

• Lobster is the first English-language film by Yorgos Lanthimos, one of the most renown Greek directors, the leader of the Greek New Wave. In this film, Lanthimos returns to motifs present in his entire work, inviting the viewers to a hostile dystopian world, where absurdity and grotesque are used as tools to show the human against different means of enslavement. Full of symbolism bordering on surrealism, Lobster is an uncompromising diagnosis of the superficiality of contemporary human relations and an analysis of the mechanisms behind voluntary relinquishment of freedom.

• What does it mean to create a true relationship?

• We will try to answer these and many other questions together with our club's expert, professor Olga Katafiasz. We invite you to the screening and discussion, during which you will be able to ask questions and share your ideas on how to interpret the film. What do you think Lobster is about? We want to hear your opinion!

• Theatre and film expert, Dean of the Faculty of Theatre Directing at the AST National Academy of Theatre Arts in Kraków. In the years 1995-2008, she worked at the theatre journal Gazeta Teatralna Didaskalia, where she still regularly publishes essays and reviews. Author of sketches on the relations between literature, theatre and film, and books: Próby wrażliwości. Szekspirowskie ekranizacje Laurence'a Oliviera i Kennetha Branagha [Trials of Sensibility. Shakespearean Screen Adaptations of Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh] (2005), Słownik wiedzy o filmie [Dictionary of Film Knowledge] (with Joanna Wojnicka, 2005, 2008), Krzysztof Globisz. Notatki o skubaniu roli [Krzysztof Globisz. Notes on Plucking a Role] (2010), Shakespeare i kino: strategie adaptacyjne i ich konteksty społeczno-kulturowe [Shakespeare and Cinema: Adaptation Strategies and their Socio-cultural Contexts] (2012). In the series Literatura na ekranie [Literature on Screen], she edited the volume Lustra i echa. Filmowe adaptacje dzieł Williama Shakespeare’a [Mirrors and Echoes. Film Adaptations of the Works of William Shakespeare] (2017). She is currently working on a book about the work of Quentin Tarantino and would take Django Unchained and Hitchcock's Rear Window to a desert island.