Jacques Demy’s deliriously enchanted musical adaptation of a classic French fairy tale follows a princess (Catherine Deneuve) of unparalleled beauty and virtue who must escape her father's misguided desire to marry his own daughter. Seeking advice from her fabulously-dressed fairy godmother (Delphine Seyrig), the princess asks her father to procure three impossibly fantastical dresses—the last of which is the skin of his jewel-spewing donkey, which she dons as a disguise before meeting her Prince Charming (Jacques Perrin). Featuring some of Michel Legrand’s most memorable songs, Donkey Skin is a marvellous masterpiece whose whimsically anachronistic elements and allusions to transgressive desire reflects on female agency, social mores, and that ever elusive happily-ever-after ending.

Jacques Demy (1931–1990, France) was a director and screenwriter best known for his colourful musical films and his fruitful collaborations with composer Michel Legrand and actress Catherine Deneuve, especially for the films The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). He began his career as an assistant to animator Paul Grimault before making his debut feature, Lola (1961), and his second film, The Bay of Angels (1963). He was the posthumous subject of three documentary films by his wife, the filmmaker Agnès Varda.