Perfect Number

Southeast US Premiere

Polish master Krzysztof Zanussi delivers a remarkable return to cinema in his new poetic film meditation about mortality, faith, and science. Zanussi continues his exploration and keen observations of the human condition in the contemporary world, delving into the inner lives of his characters and challenging us to question our conventional priorities.

Co-produced in collaboration with Italy and Israel, the drama unfolds in Jerusalem, where Joachim, a wealthy Jewish man who has achieved nearly all his life's ambitions and amassed immense wealth, grapples with loneliness despite the millions he possesses. While wrestling with the notions of happiness and fate, Joachim reflects on an event from three years earlier when he discovered the existence of his only known relative living in Poland. Separated by two generations and thousands of miles, David, like Joachim, is a confident and clever scholar. But he is also a young loner with an extraordinary talent for mathematics, allowing him to calculate precisely how much time he has until his last breath. When Joachim offers a substantial sum of money to David, he principally refuses, choosing to maintain his modest but fulfilling life of teaching and researching Physics. This marks the beginning of an intellectual duel between two brilliant minds, their unexpected meeting leading to a reflection on the enigmatic nature of life, its impermanence, and its meaning.

As with his Academy Award-nominated masterpiece A Year of the Quiet Sun, Krzysztof Zanussi raises questions about the existence of God and crafts a profoundly human tale, one with keen observation, wry humor, and a startling finale. It is more than the confession of an aging filmmaker — possibly making his final film — but a deeply felt warning that stems from the fear of having wasted one’s life focusing on the wrong things.