Sarah Dobai’s The Donkey Field weaves a link between a racist attack on a young boy and the story of the persecution of Marie and Balthazar in the acclaimed film Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966).
The book features a text, based on sections of a memoir of Budapest in 1944 and scenes which re-enact and reframe Bresson’s allegorical story about the scapegoating of innocent subjects. Partly shot on the streets of present-day Budapest, under a regime criticised for its anti-immigrant policies and harsh treatment of refugees, The Donkey Field underlines the relevance of the boy’s story to other, more recent stories of displacement and persecution. The black and white book uses the format of a photo novella and loosely references a 1952 book by Jacques Prevert that also features a donkey.
