Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), directed by Robert Bresson, follows a donkey named Balthazar through a series of owners — some kind, most cruel — in rural France. Through the donkey's passive, suffering eyes, Bresson observes human cruelty, grace, and indifference in concentrated form.

Why It Matters

• Jean-Luc Godard declared it the world's greatest film: 'Everyone who sees this film will be absolutely thunderstruck'
• Bresson's use of non-professional actors, elliptical editing, and sound design creates a cinema of pure sensation without psychological explanation
• The film's passive, non-reactive central figure — a donkey — makes the human behavior around it seem even more extreme

Bresson stripped everything from cinema that he considered theatrical artifice. What remained — fragmented, precise, devastating — is a film about suffering, innocence, and the inexplicable. It is one of cinema's most singular works.

Reference:

Wikipedia: Au Hasard Balthazar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_hasard_Balthazar