Au Hasard Balthazar

Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) is Robert Bresson's quiet French drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Its lead is a donkey. Children name him Balthazar, and through his patient eyes we watch human cruelty and the rare flashes of kindness around him.

The animal is handed from one owner to the next — farmers, a baker, a drunkard, a cold-eyed local named Gérard who hurts whatever he touches. His path mirrors that of Marie (Anne Wiazemsky), the girl who once loved him and slowly loses herself to the wrong man. Two lives rhyme, both carrying weight that isn't theirs.

Bresson worked with non-actors, a stripped-down camera and almost no score, the spare style that became his signature. Critics keep ranking it among the greatest films ever made about suffering and grace, and filmmakers from Tarkovsky to Godard adored it. It moves slowly and asks for patience, but for the right viewer it lands like a punch you don't see coming. Stream Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) online on iFILM.