After twenty years away, Odysseus washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognizable. The king has finally returned home, but much has changed in his kingdom since he left to fight in the Trojan war.
Acting
Fiennes' body language speaks entire epics.
Cinematography
Ithaca's harsh beauty mirrors its king's ruin.
Direction
Pasolini strips myth to human scale.
Director
Uberto Pasolini
Ralph Fiennes
Odysseus (Ulisse)
Juliette Binoche
Penelope
Charlie Plummer
Telemachus (Telemaco)
Marwan Kenzari
Antinous (Antinoo)
Claudio Santamaria
Eumeas (Eumeo)
Ángela Molina
Eurycleia (Euriclea)
Nikitas Tsakiroglou
Laertes
Tom Rhys Harries
Pisander (Pisandro)
Jamie Andrew Cutler
Eurymachus (Eurimaco)
Moe Bar-El
Elatus (Elato)
Amir Wilson
Philetus (Filezio)
Jaz Hutchins
Hippotas
Hugh Quarshie
Imphinomous
Chris Corrigan
Polybus
Aaron Cobham
Leodes (Leode)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Pasolini previously directed Still Life, about a council worker who buries the unclaimed dead—another meditation on dignity in obscurity.
The film adapts only the final forty lines of Homer's epic, treating the slaughter of suitors not as triumph but as traumatic necessity. Fiennes reportedly studied movement patterns of displaced persons for the beach arrival scene.
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