Devils & Shamans Retrospective: The Film’s of Andrzej Żuławski @ The Garden Cinema
Fri 21 Aug – Wed 21 Oct 2026
The Garden Cinema will present the most comprehensive retrospective of Andrzej Żuławski to ever take place in the UK.
Bringing together 10 features from his extensive career, Devils and Shamans is an opportunity to experience his radical style, as it evolved over the span of five decades. Żuławski created films of extreme emotional and intellectual intensity, combining psychological drama, politics, horror, science fiction, romance, and philosophy into a singular body of work that continues to defy cinematic language.
Andrzej Żuławski
Experience the visionary world of Andrzej Żuławski, the “enfant terrible” of European cinema whose uncompromising art defied regimes and redefined moving pictures. Born in the ashes of WWII, Żuławski rejected traditional realism for a cinema of beautiful excess, ecstasy, and psychological fury.
His career became a legendary battle against oppression. Banned by Soviet censors and driven into exile, he channelled his defiance into masterpieces across France and Poland; from the raw emotion of That Most Important Thing: Love to the legendary, state-silenced sci-fi epic On the Silver Globe.
Once a fiercely guarded cult secret, Żuławski is now celebrated as a towering titan of 20th-century art. The Devils and Shamans retrospective invites you to witness his provocative filmography on the big screen as it was meant to be seen.
Featured Films & Launch Event
Traditional Polish cakes, hazelnut vodka + Possession
To celebrate the start of our retrospective of Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski, members are invited to join us on Friday 21 August for a special launch event.
For the occasion, our Atrium Bar team will be serving up slices of traditional Polish cake, accompanied by a shot of the country’s iconic hazelnut vodka, to sip alongside.
Friday 21st August 2026 | 19:00-20:30
Introduction by Daniel Bird: 20:30-20:45
Film Screening: 20:45-22:50
Price: £17
Daniel Bird
France-based writer Daniel Bird turned a student interview with Andrzej Żuławski into a lifelong creative partnership. He preserved the director’s legacy by driving restorations, script editing, and the North American release of Possession. A curator for Ciné Lumière and the Horse Hospital, Daniel collaborates intimately with Żuławski’s core artistic circle to champion this revolutionary cinema.
For full details of the event click HERE
Other screenings of Possession:
Fri 18 Sep: 20:30 | Sat 10 Oct: 17:30
About the film
After returning home to West Berlin, international spy Mark is blindsided when his wife, Anna, abruptly requests a divorce without explanation. As he attempts to uncover the cause of her sudden detachment, he begins to monitor her, eventually discovering that she is hiding a series of complex and unsettling secrets. As Mark digs deeper, he is confronted with a progression of inexplicable and increasingly volatile events. His investigation descends into a psychological downward spiral, forcing him to navigate the blurring lines between his crumbling personal life and a reality that begins to defy logical explanation.
Set in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, infused with Cold War-era paranoia and tension, Possession is a film that defies classification. One of the most tortured portraits of a disintegrating marriage ever presented on screen, visionary director Andrzej Żuławski masterfully blends horror and thriller conventions into an utterly unique cinema experience, drawing on his own traumatic divorce and creative blacklisting in his native Poland.
Book tickets HERE
The screening on August 22nd will feature an introduction by writer Daniel Bird.
Screenings:
Sat 22 Aug: 14:25 | Mon 21 Sep: 14:30 | Sat 03 Oct: 19:45
About the film: A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to find freedom and start a new civilization. They do not realise that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They eventually die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god. Some time later, a space bureaucrat, running from a broken heart, arrives and finds the colonizer’s descendants enslaved by bird-monsters called Cherns. Society is divided into numerous classes, and everyone is waiting for the arrival of a messiah. The newcomer is considered a suitable candidate, and for some time he lives as a god.
In 1977, as the film was approaching completion, the Polish government ordered the production to be shut down and all the negatives be destroyed. Miraculously, the original film reels were preserved and ten years later the film was presented at the Cannes Film Festival to great acclaim. On the Silver Globe stands as a testament to Żuławski’s cinematic genius and his daring approach to storytelling. Its surreal narrative, profound themes, and historical context make it a fascinating piece of cinematic history.
Book tickets HERE
The screening on August 23rd will be introduced by writer Daniel Bird.
The screening on October 1st will be introduced by filmmaker Craig Williams.
Screenings:
Sun 23 Aug: 17:15 | Thu 10 Sep: 15:30 | Thu 01 Oct: 20:30
About the film: An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky’s ‘The Possessed’. The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into committing a political assassination.
Book tickets HERE
The screening on the 26th of August will be introduced by writer Michael Brooke.
The screenings on September the 11th and 27th will feature a video introduction by Andrzej Jaroszewicz, camera operator on The Devil and frequent collaborator of Andrzej Żuławski.
Screenings:
Wed 26 Aug: 18:00 | Fri 11 Sep: 20:30 | Sun 27 Sep: 16:30
About the film: During the Prussian army’s invasion of Poland in 1793, a young Polish nobleman, Jakub, is saved from imprisonment by a stranger, who in return wants to obtain a list of his fellow conspirators. Following his mysterious savior across the country, Jakub sees the overall chaos and moral corruption, including his father’s death and the betrayal of his friend who stole his fiancee. Becoming apparently demented by what he has seen, he commits a number of seemingly motiveless and gory killings.
An allegory for the political crisis in Poland during 1968, when communist leaders created riots to punish student, the film was shelved upon completion by the government. It was accused of excess of violence and erotic scenes, but the political undertones of Żuławski’s film were more objectionable to the government. The film had to wait 16 years for its cinema premiere and was not released to the public until 1988. Before this happened, however, Żuławski was forced to leave Poland, deprived of the chance to make films in his country, he left for France to continue his career there.
Book tickets HERE
The screening on October 4th will be introduced by writer Daniel Bird.
The screening on October 15th will be introduced by filmmaker Craig Williams.
Screenings:
Fri 28 Aug: 20:30 | Sun 04 Oct: 19:00 | Thu 15 Oct: 20:25
About the film: Michał, a reserved anthropology professor, uncovers the perfectly preserved remains of a 3,000-year-old shaman during an excavation in a marsh. Around the same time, he meets a mysterious, impulsive young woman known only as ‘the Italian.’ Drawn to her raw, untamed energy, Michał begins a feverish and increasingly destructive affair with her. As their relationship spirals into obsession, he becomes haunted by visions connected to the ancient shaman. The boundaries between science and mysticism, reason and primal instinct, begin to dissolve, pulling Michał into a world where erotic desire and death become inseparably intertwined.
Iwona Petry, who played the mysterious ‘Italian,’ had no prior acting experience. Żuławski reportedly discovered her in a Warsaw café and offered her the lead role on the spot. Due to its graphic sexuality and critiques of religious and social norms, the film caused major controversy in Poland. Some nicknamed it ‘Last Tango in Warsaw,’ and screenings were limited in certain areas.
The screening on the 12th of October will feature an introduction by writer Michael Brooke.
Screenings:
Sun 30 Aug: 14:45 | Sun 06 Sep: 19:00 | Mon 12 Oct: 20:30
About the film: The first feature by Andrzej Żuławski immediately established his emotionally charged, fast-and-furious style. Drawing from the biography of his father, particularly his experiences in Nazi German-occupied Poland, the film follows a fugitive whose reality implodes when he witnesses the murders of his family, propelling him into a nightmarish world filled with doppelgängers, fluid identities, pervasive dread, and an enigmatic Nazi vaccine laboratory. In all its fantastic and macabre glory, The Third Part of the Night is a delirious portrayal of the chaos wrought upon the psyche by the horrors of war, and one of the most remarkable directorial debuts of all time.
Book tickets HERE
The Most Important Thing: Love
The screening on the September 1st will be introduced by Garden Cinema team member, writer, and filmmaker Sarah Grice.
Screenings:
Tue 01 Sep: 18:00 | Wed 16 Sep: 14:30 | Tue 13 Oct: 20:30
About the film: Servais, a photographer burdened with debt, crosses paths with Nadine Chevalier, a talented actress forced to appear in low-budget exploitation films to make ends meet. Moved by her vulnerability and her dignity despite the humiliations she faces, Servais decides to help her by financing an ambitious theatrical production that could revive her career. But this act of support gradually turns into a passionate and painful love. Nadine, who is married to Jacques – a fragile and depressive man – becomes torn between her sense of duty, her guilt, and the overwhelming pull of this new love. Caught between drama, sacrifice, and obsession, each character struggles with their own inner wounds while desperately seeking some form of redemption through love.
Żuławski’s first film produced after his complicated exile from Poland, That Most Important Thing: Love was adapted from the novel by Christopher Frank La Nuit Américaine. Featuring French singer Jacques Dutronc and Romy Schneider, who won the inaugural César Award for Best Actress, the film was successful enough in France that it allowed Żuławski to return to Poland to make his next feature, On the Silver Globe.
Book tickets HERE
Screenings:
Thu 03 Sep: 20:30 | Tue 22 Sep: 20:30
About the film: Intended as a homage to Fyodor Dostoyevsky and loosely based on his novel The Idiot, Żuławski’s L’Amour Braque is the story of a bloody vendetta, of bonds between two men from opposite backgrounds, and a violent love triangle. After a successful bank robbery, Micky hopes to take back his girlfriend Marie from rival gangsters. On the way to Paris he meets Leon, a neurotic dreamer whom he considers an idiot. Leon can hardly understand what Micky is up to but he follows him everywhere and soon falls in love with Marie.
Zulawski’s postmodern adaptation is presented with an intense sense of visual style suggestive of the hyper-realistic and chaotic world of bande dessinée. Abundant with images of hysteria from start to finish, the screen is filled with outbursts of energy and violence whereby performances are choreographed into a perverse, bloody ballet.
Book tickets HERE
Screenings:
Tue 08 Sep: 20:30 | Fri 25 Sep: 18:00
About the film: When two young men arrive at a family-run guesthouse in rural France, their anticipation of a few days’ peace and quiet is undermined by a variety of sinister occurrences. A small bird is found murdered, its neck in a tiny noose, a strangely sexualised stain appears on a wall, and a slug crawls across the breakfast tray. Are these all signs comprising a portent of truly cosmic significance, or merely bizarre coincidences? And is it any wonder that one of the visitors, Witold has such difficulty writing his novel, or that his companion Fuchs prefers to find solace in earthier pleasures?
The final film by Andrzej Żuławski, Cosmos adapts Witold Gombrowicz’s legendarily challenging novel into a beguilingly witty combination of lighthearted French farce and a complex, knowing reflection on the absurdities both of humanity itself and the way that we define our notion of the universe according to our individual hang-ups.
Book tickets HERE
The screening on October 5th will be introduced by writer Daniel Bird.
Screenings:
Tue 29 Sep: 14:30 | Mon 05 Oct: 20:00
About the film: Based on the musical recording of the famous opera by Modest Mussorgsky, whereby a possible impostor torments a newly crowned medieval czar who may have ordered the real successor’s death. Never before screened theatrically in the UK, Andrzej Żuławski’s adaptation of Boris Godunov is about the tragic events surrounding the ruling of the Russian tsar in the early 17th century. The recording itself was made two years before the filming with the participation of the Washington Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich, and several opera stars including Ruggero Raimondi.
Żuławski’s film situates the viewer inside the metafictional space of the opera house, just as if the audience were watching the performance live. Highly controversial at the time of release, the director deliberately fills the picture with a plenty of anachronisms, commenting on Soviet history and other dictatorships of the 20th century.
Book tickets HERE
Video Bazaar presents: Possession (North American Cut)
Video Bazaar is thrilled to present a rare screening of the North American theatrical cut of Possession as part of our season, Devils and Shamans: the films of Andrzej Żuławski
Screening: Wed 21 Oct: 20:30
About the film: The North American cut of Possession was heavily altered to fit a more conventional genre mold. Distributors removed over 40 minutes of the film. They also altered the original score, re-arranged scenes and added footage not present in the original edit. The 1981 director’s cut by Andrzej Żuławski focuses heavily on emotional collapse and psychological turmoil. The North American version, however, attempts to make the film look like an alien or monster movie in the vein of David Cronenberg or John Carpenter.
Book tickets HERE
Additional Information:
For full details @ The Garden Cinema click HERE
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