Boorman And The Devil

After the success of Point Blank and Deliverance, Warner Brothers offered John Boorman the chance to direct a sequel to their smash hit, The Exorcist. The result was a critical and financial failure that nearly ended Boorman’s filmmaking career. But to be an artist is to be a risk-taker.

Obsessed with Exorcist II: The Heretic, director David Kittredge embarked on a seven year journey to tell the story of how he made one of the most audacious, big-budget creative swings in Hollywood history, and then endured a critical and commercial cataclysm. It’s a story about how Hollywood once took huge bets on auteur filmmakers, and how that era ended. And it’s the story of one of the most hypnotic, subversive and misunderstood studio films in Hollywood history.

Photo: Carolyn Cole, LA Times



CIFF will present its Honorary Disruptor Award 2025 to filmmaker John Boorman followed by a screening of Zardoz at 20:00 on Tuesday 11 November at the Triskel.