The Turin Horse

Taking its cue from Friedrich Nietzsche’s encounter with a flogged horse on Via Carlo Alberto – an incident reportedly linked with the philosopher’s mental breakdown – The Turin Horse depicts the imagined aftermath of this seemingly innocuous but destructively profound confrontation. 

A man and his daughter grind through a regular routine of drudgery and agricultural labour somewhere in the wilds of the Hungarian countryside. Outside their hut, unrelenting storms rage. The only break from their suffocating daily ritual comes in the form of alarming news and unexpected visitors from the outside world, which slowly build into a terrifying portent of an oncoming apocalypse. 

Raw, compelling and emotionally devastating, Béla Tarr’s final film is a fitting parting shot from a director renowned for creating arresting, artistically precise and philosophically rigorous work.