Le Boucher

Chabrol’s most celebrated and sinister film sees a tender friendship between a schoolteacher and local butcher darken as a series of murders unsettles life in their village. A schoolteacher and a butcher strike up a tender, tentative friendship in a small Périgord village, just as a series of murders unsettle the local community. A work of extraordinary restraint, in which the landscape itself seems to harbour violence. Le Boucher profits from Jean Yanne’s remarkable performance – one of the great, mostly unsung, achievements of French cinema. Contains scenes of graphic violence or injury and harm towards children. The screening of Le Boucher on Wednesday 9 September will be introduced by season curator Catherine Wheatley. See the Philosophical Screens discussion on Le Boucher. Also available on BFI Player