Peter Weir: Mystic and Traveller

Peter Weir – more than most filmmakers – understands the power of a first impression: that first image. Watching any of his films is like opening your eyes to a new landscape after a long journey. At a time when exoticism has become commonplace and long-distance travel – our own or someone else’s – has been thoroughly domesticated, the images created in Peter Weir’s films continue to surprise with the freshness of their perspective, the richness of their texture, and the deep, genuine curiosity about the world that permeates the Australian director’s cinema.

And even though Weir completed only thirteen feature films over the course of his career, and has now been retired for nearly two decades, each encounter with his worlds – whether Indonesia in The Year of Living Dangerously or the constructed television town of The Truman Show – still offers the viewer the thrill of something both new and strangely familiar.

No one takes us on a journey toward ourselves quite like Peter Weir.

Michał Oleszczyk

The section is curated by Michał Oleszczyk and Jakub Duszyński.