390 kilometers separate Alvin Straight from his estranged brother, who has just suffered a stroke. Alvin himself is plagued by numerous health problems that prevent him from driving a car, yet he still feels the need to set out to see his brother and try to reconcile with him in the twilight of their lives. So he climbs onto his old lawnmower and, at a speed of eight kilometers per hour, embarks on what may be the final journey of his life. This story really happened, and David Lynch paid tribute to it — perhaps in an unusual form for his body of work, yet still containing themes close to him: small-town life, little secrets, and the not-always-pleasant life experiences hidden within each of us. A luminously moving film, first shown to audiences at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999, is being screened on the occasion of the director’s would-be eightieth birthday.
David Lynch (1946 - 2025) debuted with the surrealist work "Eraserhead" (1976) but gained the attention of the wider public with "Blue Velvet" (1986) and "Wild at Heart" (1990 – Palme d’Or at the Cannes IFF). He worked his way even deeper into cultural awareness with the breakthrough television series “Twin Peaks” (1990-91), which he then extended via the feature "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" (1992). In "Lost Highway" (1996), "Mulholland Drive" (2001), and "Inland Empire" (2006) he developed the theme of the split human personality as an indivisible part of the “schizophrenia” of postmodern reality. The aggressively simple "The Straight Story" (1999) demonstrated that the director is capable of even a clean film form devoid of postmodern sidetracking. In recent years he has spent time composing music and creating internet videos.
