Janus contemporaries

While vacationing by the Baltic Sea, writer Leon and photographer Felix are surprised to encounter Nadja, a mysterious young woman staying as a guest at the holiday home of Felix's family. Nadja soon distracts Leon from finishing his latest novel, not only because of her passionate liaison with lifeguard Devid but also because her brutal honesty forces Leon to confront his artistic inadequacies. As Nadja and Leon grow closer, an encroaching forest...

All we imagine as light follows three very different women working at the same hospital Prabha, Anu, and Parvathy each contending with personal and material struggles amid a modernizing India riven by gentrification and rising Hindu nationalism. When Parvathy is evicted and forced to move back to her childhood village, Prabha and Anu travel with her to the seaside, where they shake loose their remaining secrets and in one otherworldly sequence a lingering...

"The latest existential epic from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a masterclass in characterization, atmosphere, and moral and philosophical inquiry. When he comes under scrutiny for misconduct, cynical middle-school instructor Samet fears that his punishment will trap him in the snowy, isolated Anatolian village he has grown to despise. The only ray of hope is his relationship with Nuray, a fellow teacher who openly challenges Samet's bitter...

The themes, images, and cultural vernacular of Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz continue to haunt David Lynch's films, from his early short The Alphabet to his recent television series Twin Peaks: The Return. Arguably, no filmmaker has so consistently drawn inspiration consciously or unconsciously from a single work. Is Lynch trapped in the Land of Oz? If so, what can we learn about his body of work by closely examining how it intersects and communicates...

"A celebration of an artist's life in the purest sense, Ryuichi Sakamoto Opus is the swan song of one of the world's greatest musicians. As a parting gift, just months before his death in 2023, Sakamoto mustered all of his energy to leave us with one final performance: a concert film featuring just him and a piano, directed by his son, Neo Sora. Curated and sequenced by Sakamoto himself, the twenty of his pieces played in the film wordlessly tell...

From two-time Palme d'Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne comes the story of seventeen-year-old Lokita and twelve-year-old Tori, two immigrants to Belgium from Cameroon and Benin, respectively whose siblinglike bond is the only resource they can depend on in their struggle for survival on the margins of European society. The pair work as performers in a cheap trattoria, dealing drugs on the side, while balancing the demands of an indifferent bureaucracy....

Secrets swirl beneath the surface of a remote Italian community in Maura Delpero's exquisite wartime drama. In a majestic Alpine village touched only faintly by the upheavals of modern life, a strict schoolteacher's family undergoes a profound shift when a mysterious Sicilian soldier arrives fleeing the front lines of World War II. As the seasons change, the family's three very different daughters will each find their lives transformed. Blending historically...