‘Eternal Sunshine’ duo reunite on stage for 30th Encounters film festival

Incredibly, Bristol’s annual Encounters celebration of short film and animation turns 30 this year. And they’re celebrating in style by reuniting Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman for a live on-stage conversation and screening of their Oscar winning masterpiece Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at the Bristol Beacon. The event marks the first time the duo have appeared on stage together in at least 10 years.

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’.

And that’s not all. Both men will then stay on at the five day festival to introduce the UK premieres of their latest solo works – Kaufman’s How To Shoot A Ghost, starring Jessie Buckley and Josef Akiki, and showing as part of Encounters’ short film competition, and Gondry’s witty, family-friendly feature-length animation Maya Give Me A Title, winner of a Silver Bear at this year’s Berlin film festival.

Encounters director Dave Taylor-Matthews

“For our 30th edition, we couldn’t think of a more perfect way to launch than by reuniting Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman – two visionaries who embody the experimental spirit that Encounters has championed since 1995,” says Encounters director Dave Taylor-Matthews. “These masters of mind-bending creativity have spent the last three decades redefining what’s possible in film, and their reunion on our stage perfectly honours our shared history in bold, original cinema.

Charlie Kaufaman’s ‘How to Shoot a Ghost’

Encounters 2025 runs from Wednesday 24 September to Sunday 28 September at venues including Bristol Beacon, Watershed and Arnolfini. More than 100 shorts from over 50 countries have won through to the festival’s globally renowned competitions, with new works by Simon Ellis, Mark Jenkin, Charlie Kaufman and Ida Melum among them. The acting talent on view includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Emma D’Arcy, Marianne Faithfull, Claire Foy,  Domhnall Gleeson and Juliet Stevenson.

Michel Gondry’s ‘Maya, Give Me A Title’

As for Etermal Sunshine, here’s what the uninitiated need to know. Even the most vociferous champions of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s imaginative brilliance never claimed that emotional depth was part of his creative palette. Until this film came along in 2004. It proceeds from one of those great Philip K. Dick-style premises and whisks us through another series of typically Kaufman-esque double-backing narrative convolutions, but also succeeds in addressing the ways in which memory shapes who we are. After impetuous Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) has memories of her mutually-destructive relationship with withdrawn Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) wiped from her brain, Joel does the same.

But as his memories are erased in reverse chronological order, he soon reaches the point when he first fell in love with her. Plunged into his noggin, we follow Joel’s attempts to hide his darling Clementine in other memories before she is indeed lost and gone forever. Carrey shines in the kind of everyman role that served him so well in The Truman Show, while Winslet is remarkably less irritating then usual, their relationship helping to ground this intriguing, involving and – yes! – heartbreaking love-story-in-a-damaged-brain when director Michel Gondry permits the high concept to take flight.

Go here for tickets to the Eternal Sunshine event and here for the full programme for Encounters 2025.

All images supplied by Encounters/