Holy Motors

COVID-19 Upate

Unfortunately due to COVID-related staff shortages, ACMI has had to reduce the operating hours of our cinemas resulting in the cancellation of a number of cinema sessions. We have cancelled the 15 Jan 6.30pm Holy Motors session. Affected ticketholders will be contacted and refunded directly. Please check your email or contact us if you have any questions. We apologise for the inconvenience and hope to see you again soon.

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French filmmaker Leos Carax takes audiences on a surreal, fantastical journey in Holy Motors, his love letter to cinema.

“I don’t think men were meant to be interviewed,” said filmmaker Leos Carax in an interview. “Men talk about art, and artists make art, but should artists talk?” Carax likes to make art that does the talking for him, with his hand firmly on the volume dial as audiences become addicted to the pace and fervour. Such is Holy Motors (2012), a film within a film in every sense of the term as a man – Mr Oscar (Denis Lavant) – wakes one morning to walk through a door in his bedroom that leads to a movie theatre. He becomes the leading man, morphing through various roles over the course of the day and interacting with an eclectic cast of supporting players made up of everyone from Eva Mendes to Kylie Minogue.

A surrealist fantasy in the truest sense, Holy Motors is a film you have to feel rather than over-intellectualise, and going with Carax’s singular flow is the only way to proceed. “Here is a film that is exasperating, frustrating, anarchic and in a constant state of renewal,” legendary film critic Roger Ebert wrote at the time. “It's not tame. Some audience members are going to grow very restless. My notion is, few will be bored.” Competing for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, Holy Motors is a love letter to cinema that has intrigued and baffled audiences in equal measure since its release.