Julien Donkey-Boy

Part of the Special Series RADICAL 90s

Pearl: “Keep brushing your teeth and you will always be a happy person.”

Grainy images, unfiltered thoughts, fragmented storytelling: Julien Donkey-Boy is Harmony Korine’s radical portrait of the inner life of a person with Schizophrenia — and the first American film to officially align itself with the Dogme 95 manifesto.

Julien (Ewen Bremner) lives in New York City with his profoundly dysfunctional family: an emotionally neglectful father (Werner Herzog), a pregnant sister who barely seems adult herself (Chloë Sevigny), and a younger brother who channels his aggression into ritualized wrestling matches (Evan Neumann). Julien wanders through the city, hallucinates conversations with historical figures, and struggles with the death of his mother. Reality and imagination blur beyond distinction, and soon the fragile balance of this family structure is irreparably shattered by a series of traumatic events…