The Double Life of Véronique

Experience Krzysztof Kieślowski's achingly beautiful masterwork, digitally restored in glorious 4K.

Weronika (Irène Jacob), a burgeoning singer from Poland, wakes one day with a strange feeling that she's not alone in the world. Compelled to visit her Aunt, she travels to Kraków where, from a distance, she notices an identical version of herself on a bus as it circles a city square.

Curator's note

A veritable cavalcade of beautiful images, sequences and ideas, The Double Life of Véronique was a major international breakthrough for director Krzysztof Kieślowski. After three decades of filmmaking in Poland, he took the opportunity to work in Western Europe while Poland was undergoing social and political change. Moving away from the political, Kieślowski shifts the focus to the mystical and emotional, a change that would come to define his final four films before passing away in 1996.

Critic Roger Ebert astutely described The Double Life of Véronique as a "film about a feeling". Expanding on that, the film is about a shared feeling – the feelings of two identical characters, but also the shared feelings the film is still able to conjure in its audience to this day.

The Double Life of Véronique screened in competition at the 44th Cannes Film Festival where it won the FIPRESCI Award, and Irène Jacob quite rightly received the award for best actress for her performance and illuminating on screen presence in both roles as both Weronika and Véronique.

– Reece Goodwin (Curator, Film & TV)