The intricacies of animation go deeper than the illustrations on the page. Animation has many layers to it. It takes on many forms. Forever versatile in its craft. Creating movement out of the clay with a little motion and a dream to shape a vision that feels long lasting. A creative medium that feels timeless because it is. It is forging a creative style that has always been inventive. Influencing the filmmaker to be inventive with their choices. Cinema understands the methods that help to create innovative stories. It nurtures them. It preserves them The films that create art with high stakes through a medium that has been intricate by design. There is a rewarding feeling in watching the films that understand the delivery in art that matters. The films that deserve to be seen.

STREET OF CROCODILES (1986)

A puppet on strings parallels a human being feeling stuck in one place. The type of strings that can suffocate a person if it keeps them down long enough. When a puppet finds its strings detached, it opens up the space for curiosity to spread around the room. Enough fascination to step outside of the room that contains him and stepping into one that holds sinister motivation. You can’t help yourself but be attracted to the very thing that happens to lure you inside. It is luring him with purpose, to watch from a distance while he stumbles his way into all of the wrong choices. Eventually, it takes this wandering puppet to realize that he doesn’t need strings to guide him. He just needs to be thrust into the right circumstances in order to make the choices that matter in the grand scheme of time. ‘Street of Crocodiles’ follows the story of a puppet who explores the sinister room that he finds himself in after he is severed from his confinement.

MEMOIR OF A SNAIL (2024)

Life is complicated. Life is messy. It may only be fully understood by experiencing it backwards. Your emotions are encompassed by what you have lived through. Specifically tailored by your experiences. The hardships that are learned from the separation of the little family that you have left. It sets someone who deems herself as a misfit onto a path of needed self confidence. Diving through the mess that has become her life in order to find the key to what happiness could be like for her. Clearing out the clutter relieves the pressure that she has felt for never living up to the person that she had always dreamed herself to be. Dreams that can shift in different ways. The end of the road that always varies by the path that you choose to take. She has to live her life forward. ‘Memoir of a Snail’ navigates the story of a lonely woman’s journey through grief.

DARKNESS, LIGHT, DARKNESS (1989)

Building yourself from the ground up, shaping your body to fit the shape of your mind in the way that it is formed intrinsically to fit who you are. We are individuals who are often molded by how we view ourselves. We become mentally blocked by how we perceive the image that looks back at us in the mirror. The conflicting confusion that exists in being okay with how you appear to be. Being content with who you are. That kind of confidence must be built from the inside in order for it to have any kind of effect from the outside. A person doesn’t feel it unless they believe it. They can’t believe it until they go through the building blocks of what it means to find their inner beauty. It is about figuring out which part fits into the right place. ‘Darkness, Light, Darkness’ gradually constructs the story of a human body reconstructing itself.

LABYRINTH (1963)

In order to find your wings, you have to understand where it is that you are flying to. We are simple human beings who get by with a mere use of guidance to fuel us. To keep our heads held high because lowering them even a little bit risks steering off of the track. It risks derailing the entire process of where you assumed you would be. Assumption doesn’t always have the best interest of a person at heart. A man who finds that he is not equipped to deal with the hands of life pushing him into his unsalvageable life. Devoured by the system that does not seek to help him benefit from anything that he has deemed worth living for. Eaten alive by his own choices. The decisions that have brought him to this point. The point of no return. ‘Labyrinth’ follows the story of a man who gets devoured by totalitarian rule.

DIMENSIONS OF DIALOGUE (1983)

The bare bones of what it takes to communicate with people shines a light on how society interacts with the faces that form in front of them. Faces that adapt to the light. The words that start to form naturally with the right tone at the right time. There is a rhythm in how people speak. Finding the beauty in communication. Building up the space to understand each other. Looking each other in the eyes and seeing where their mutual fascination can lead them to. The greatest depths can hold the space for fascinating conversations to start building from. Identities evolve because of it. It all circles back to the first slew of words shared by two people enamored by their mutual embrace. ‘Dimensions of Dialogue’ is a short film enamored by the formation of conversation.

MARY AND MAX (2009)

The most beautiful conversations start from the meeting of two strangers in different parts of the world. They may have little in common yet one smile could still light up a room. Finding some common ground through the little things that give their lives the meaning that it needs. A friendship between two unlikely pen pals who live at different stages of their lives. The people who find that talking about their struggles allows them the space to vent through a pen, a piece of paper and a thousand words. Those same words that often fail to come out when people feel disconnected from their voices. The right words will always come at the right time where they matter the most. ‘Mary and Max’ journeys on the story of two pen pals forming an unlikely friendship.

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON (2021)

A tiny shell with a hunger to explore makes for an interesting perspective when figuring out the wonders of the world. An eagerness to explore the things that you have never seen before. An adorable shell who creates a vibrant existence for the life that only he knows how to live. A little life that feels big when life is lived in the way that it is meant to be lived. Living with an excitement in your heart and the joy that fills your eyes because for the first time in a while, you understand what it means to feel alive. You understood it because it had to be felt in order to be seen. Everybody loves adventure. Everybody loves the shell named Marcel. ‘Marcel the Shell with Shoes On’ follows the journey of a tiny one inch shell exploring the world.

WALLACE AND GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT (2005)

A small town in a quaint world where the people live their days in peace find their quiet to be disrupted when an unusual creature comes into the mix. It takes the unique duo of a man with a love for cheese and a charming dog to get to the bottom of what is wreaking havoc in their town. Ridding the gardens of the pests that nestle in the night. Their next best technical invention turns their home into an open space for the uninvited guests to invite themselves in. A duo that thinks on their feet. The team of two people throwing a lifeline into their town that is in desperation for a miracle. Something wicked is hopping into their lives. It is down to them to stop it. ‘Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ navigates the titular duo saving their town from a sinister invasion.

THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1994)

Christmas can get dark in the town that runs off of the scares that help to keep them alive every October before the season of giving runs into its full drive. Some scare tactics become tired. They lose their appeal. When the appeal becomes lost, they begin to wonder if it ever had a permanent space in their lives. Taking the time to self reflect on the very thing that has brought them the comfort that has become a shield of safety. It opens up the space for the magic to feel more at ease in their hearts. The comfort that seeps back in at a reshaped version of life that shines a lens on their new view of what they love to do in their favourite time of the year. ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ follows the people of Halloween Town realizing that there is a change in the air.

PARANORMAN (2012)

There is something strange happening in this town. A feeling in the air that changes the energy of the people that surround themselves in it. The people who become shielded from the experiences that they are not supposed to see. The creatures who inhabit the same paths that they walk through every day. They never notice it until they come across an energy with an indescribable attraction attached to it. An attraction that lures people in for just enough time to create a distraction. It takes a kid with a special gift. A kid who can talk to the dead. A special ability to be in tune with himself emotionally. It’s all fun, games and a great time until he accidentally raises the dead. ‘ParaNorman’ focuses on the town of Blithe Hollow as a kid and his eccentric family try to protect their town.

The art of stop motion animation shines a light on the importance of preserving creativity. It comes at a time where creatives making use of what they have is not just another means to be creative with their voice, it is a sacred practice of being in tune with how they can shape the future in the industry. An art form that has approached a crucial point in the industry where a shortage in clay puts an entire studio like Aardman in jeopardy. The restriction forces the filmmakers to re-approach their perspective on art. Readjusting their methods on how they can create. Shifting minds leads to shifting art that progresses when creatives decide to do things a little differently. Small artistic changes that lead to a lifetime of artistic freedom.

The days of summer have always looked beautiful to the eye. It is the clear skies that look calm. The summer breeze that combs through your hair gently. A hunger to explore the depths that you haven’t seen. A social life that grows because you have been growing. We never stop dreaming. Summer is the backdrop to a life that feels worth living. Encapsulating a moment that words cannot describe but we know the feeling. Cinema knows that feeling. Cinema has known the ways to explore the emotions that tie themselves to us. The films that explore what it means to simply live. Characters that are just attempting to find their footing at a pace that works for them. It inspires us to revisit the things that have never quite worked for us, figure out what does and re-adapt to them. Approaching our lives with a changing perspective. Life is constantly changing. Cinema changes alongside it. Always connected. Forever evolving. Always finding creative methods that feel new. Embodying what summer often feels like from a cinematic standpoint. The season of storytelling.

THE FLORIDA PROJECT (2017)

It is about finding your space in life. Finding the place that fits into who you are from an early age. You wouldn’t need to look for the signs that are already there inside of your heart. You know exactly where you need to be. You will know because you will feel guided to it. A six year old girl finding her fresh footing in life juxtaposing the adults around her who have lost theirs. Life can be a wandering mess. Feeling complete and incomplete at the same time. Full and empty. The fullness stays for a while but the emptiness never goes away. Always chasing hunger. Never satisfied in their space. A repeated cycle that tires itself out. The fresh eyes that become drained with how much they have to bear. ‘The Florida Project’ follows a young girl and her group of friends navigating their summer break with childhood wonder, possibility and adventure.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (2017)

A choice of words can dictate a chain of events that have their ability to change life as you know it. It changes you. It changes the people around you when they finally notice that you are moving differently than how you used to before. The energy shifts because of it. People can change you. For better and for worse. When it feels great, life is sweet yet it can have a rose tint to it that is often blinding. When it drags you through the moments of a life that feels bleak, it opens up a lesson in learning to put yourself first. Protecting your peace. Building the space to feel like yourself without sacrificing your heart for it. A teenager who finds it is easier to move to his own rhythm. ‘Call Me by Your Name’ navigates a teenage boy who spends his days through discovery in Italy.

ROMA (2018)

There will be periods in society where you will learn what you need to in order to survive the blight under your footsteps. You feel it push under every step that you take. Those steps become a path. Life can turn into a pattern of events that shapes itself from your choices. Every decision you make becomes vital in how you exist as a person. For a woman getting by in her life, there will be moments where it feels impossible. That impossibility will strive her determination for a better life. It will transform her. The moments in her history that have led her to an awakening. Opening up with an opportunity to carve out a better existence for herself. There is something beautifully transformative about the world in the direction that it takes you into. A life that will be well lived. ‘Roma’ tells the story of a mother navigating the trials and tribulations of her life in the backdrop of Mexico city in the 1970s.

BOYHOOD (2014)

Life is a time capsule of thousands of moments that play through the course of your life. You will find yourself replaying them over in your head. You will learn to make new ones. Learning to adapt to them. These memories will change because it is natural to change. It has always been built inside of us. It is who we are. It is who we have always been. A young boy trying to navigate his life in the lens of his parents divorce, watching himself change through the years at the hands of leftover emotions that have never been fully processed. Emotions that were never given the space to fully heal. Revisiting the past allows him to have clarity on his future. Looking back gives him the space to look forward. ‘Boyhood’ chronicles the 12 years of a young boy’s life.

THE FABELMANS (2022)

A kid with a dream to create films where his imagination can take the helm. He is in control of his destiny. His vision is to be someone. Someone with something to say when so many thoughts circulate to the brain and the only way forward is to get them out of his head. One idea that plants a million possibilities for a young dreamer who has all the time in the world to think about what his life could be. The parents who nurture his creativity. Teaching a child the importance of dreams. Without our dreams, there is nothing to keep us floating through life. His creativity is fulfilled by the dreams that get him there. Dreaming about every moment. Writing every moment. Capturing it all. ‘The Fabelmans’ follows a young kid aspiring to be a filmmaker while reaching adolescence.

LA PISCINE (1969)

Love can be a dangerous game. It can send you towards a spiral as you chase the feelings that keep you mesmerized. Sun drenched lovers who spend their time locked into the eyes of each other. Time stops when the only people they care about is each other. Analyzing the faces. A simple embrace has a lot of heart to it when you have been waiting for the right person to touch your heart to its core. A couple who find themselves wandering around a sun soaked villa, inviting another lover into the mix of their dynamics and navigating the complexities of their relationship. Sexual exploration that tests the limits of what they believe they can withstand. It’s all about the journey of a love that shifts everything. ‘La Piscine’ navigates the game of love as a couple dissects their mutual passion for each other.

PLEIN SOLEIL (1960)

Trying to navigate love can be overwhelming. It can be a lot of things all at once. It can be passionate. It can be distracting. It can create envy inside of you. Love can be a disguise while a person’s true intentions continue to masquerade outside of it. A killer who kills at noon and hides himself at a distance just long enough to never break the illusion. A web of constructed lies that become tangled together the longer a scheme of behavior runs deeper. The psyche of a killer who hasn’t begun to understand the gravity of who they are. Mentally shifting to avoid the truth. Mentally shut off from who they have become. A man like Tom Ripley becomes an anomaly in what lies he can carve out to benefit his manipulation on the people around him. At some point, a persona becomes disarmed when there is no illusion left to keep it running. ‘Plein Soleil’ follows the magnetic pull of a killer webbing his path of lies.

CONTE D’ÉTÉ (1996)

Love arriving at the time where it is needed the most. Navigating a relationship at the backdrop of a breezy seaside town that inhabits the movement for discovery. A man who turns his head at the quickest convenience parallels the reality that exists inside of relationships. Women who have to carry the burden on an unfair scale. An unfair weight balanced onto the shoulders of a woman who doesn’t realize the intentions of the person that she has committed her life to. People are experts at hiding the parts of themselves that they never want you to see. She has to see who her boyfriend truly is in order to set herself on a better path. She needs to find a love that suits her. ‘Conte D’été’ tells the story of a couple who have their relationship tested to its limits.

WILD AT HEART (1990)

True love can drive you crazy. It can reinvent everything that you would have assumed it to be. Alluring on the outside, intriguing on the inside and completely eye opening in the core of your heart. We often let our hearts guide us, even in situations that should be made in our minds first yet we cannot help but feel led by what feels good to us. The heart knows what it wants. It has always known the direction to move in. Guiding people in the moments when they lose sense of where they need to be. It takes being in tune with themselves to understand how quick it is to be lost in the moment of love. That one person who drives you crazy. That one person that you cannot envision yourself without. Forever under the spell of love. Always in the mood for it. ‘Wild at Heart’ documents the journey of love as it focuses on a group of lovers navigating the craziness of their lives.

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

The hot days of summer where you have the space to do whatever you want to in your own time. The days are unmatched in their possibilities. You have all the time in the world to decide. All the energy. All the plans in your head that never quite pick up steam in the ways that you expect them to. The bright ideas that are never fulfilled when you lose track of time to act on them. A man who begins to realize the wasted potential that exists inside of the choices that he makes in a day. It opens up the space for reflection. A space that is vital for fundamentally progressing towards a place of growth. Finding the healthiest version of what change should be. Your days begin to change when you finally feel happy living inside of them. ‘Do the Right Thing’ focuses on the story of a man navigating his life while living in Brooklyn.

Cinema’s exploration of summer depicts a whirlwind of emotions that exist inside of us. Films that understand how to visually display the yearning that comes alongside a need to discover where we exist on our paths to bettering our experiences. Characters that are taking the time to explore who they are under the rising sun and the sand that they feel beneath their feet. The sand that reminds them of their need to stay in the present. The sea that washes over the beginnings of a new day. There is a familiarity in recognizing those feelings in film. It brings back an ability to connect to what we see on screen. Connecting to the characters who feel like they have lived through our experiences. Running through their lives on the backdrop of the blazing sun and the ageless sky.

The cinematic bombshells that turn heads and leave their mark on the industry. Historic in their influence. Knowledgeable in their leverage through the infectious word of mouth that stems from an impactful experience in the theater. It starts with a moment, a feeling that spreads through the air from watching a film with a like-minded group of people who are there for the same reason. The films that carve out a summer with their success. Making a statement with their presence. Creating an impact with the camera that carries the aura and the screens that project it. The audiences that embrace it because they may not feel anything else like it for a long time. They know the feeling is rare. They know that cinema is sacred. The moments that a film makes are one of a kind. They are singular. Producing moments that, on a emotional level, cannot be recreated. The blockbusters that highlight the need for people to come together at a time where community is crucial. Films that create community pioneer the movements for it.

BARBIE (2023)

When did it end? All the enjoyment that you had for yourself. All the little things that made your life enjoyable. The sustenance that put the life into your eyes. A girl who used to move with meaning and now moves with confusion. Her world has shifted. The human connected to her has lost their way. Their worlds parallel each other because they feel like similar worlds molded by different perspectives. Sometimes, the experiences that you are not made for are the lessons that you have to learn. Reconnecting to a human’s world allowed her to find the human inside of her. ‘Barbie’ shapes the story on the titular doll by placing her in the fold of a human lens as she attempts to reconnect to herself again.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996)

One mission, one chance to save the people who find themselves in peril every day they step out onto the pavement and they wouldn’t even know it. A man who can easily blend into the crowds that bleed into the streets. A man who knows the severity in an impossible mission that tests every limit that exists inside of him. He was built for this moment. He has been running for this moment. Prepared from the start, leading his espionage team into an operation that he doesn’t realize has been set up to go awry. A mole that has penetrated their system. To break the mole, you have to break the system and reconnect it back to the source that it will rebuild itself from. His mission is to clear his name. His mission is to even the score. ‘Mission: Impossible’ follows the story of agent Ethan Hunt on a journey to clear his name and reroute the faults in the system.

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014)

In order to save the world they have only known, they need to go back to the past to fix what is broken. It takes a certain amount of resilience to be honest to the inner parts of yourself. Altering the past to fix their future. Saving the future to preserve their current. A map that all connects because it connects back around to life. Turning back time to find their younger selves because the lost chapters are where they find their answers. Those answers can change everything. Shifting conversations that can shift entire worldviews. The state of their world depends on them evolving. ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ turns back time on a group of mutant superheroes racing against time to fix their world.

SUPERMAN (2025)

Kindness is a superpower inside of everyone. It is fueled by a person’s hope that the world could heal itself. You believe that it could be possible. That belief is your power in how you live as a person. It powers how you perceive other people. How those people perceive you ultimately empowers the choices through the lens of a guy just trying to save the world that he cares about. It is the type of kindness that hurts in his heart when he sees untapped potential being spilled onto the floor. An uncontrollable spill that spirals into many directions. His heart can take him to the place that he has always foreseen. Without our hearts, we are nothing. ‘Superman’ flies into the sky with the message of goodness as it focuses on the titular superhero navigating his double life as a hero and a journalist.

SKYFALL (2012)

You have all the time in the world yet little to spend on your regrets. Trying to find the time in it. Opening up the space for you to think it all over. Thinking about your sins that run through the course of a person’s mind. We all have them. These sins map out our choices. People who run on a sound mind allow themselves the clarity to make their next coherent choice that makes sense to them. The choices that matter. A double agent who wishes he had the time to make the right ones. The choices that map out assignments that will either be successful or land him in grave danger. There are some places that he will have to climb back out of in order to get to the next stage of succession. An unwinding road will take you back to the same destination that you will need to make different choices in. Different choices that lead him towards a different perspective. ‘Skyfall’ stirs up the journey of James Bond as he revisits his choices after a mission goes into a direction that he doesn’t expect.

JURASSIC PARK (1993)

It has taken them 65 million years to come to this moment. A monumental experience in their lifetime. You never believed that it could be true, the dinosaurs who walk among us with ease. The dinosaurs who study us in their peripheral vision. Making their choices based on our choices. Their movements based on our movements. They observe with their own purpose in mind. Walking around in a contained space that becomes limited in how long it can contain the range of species before the walls around them collapse. A park that is amusing on the outside with less amusing inner workings that are barely holding it together. Security systems that cannot help but go offline. A team of experts who let their curiosity lead the way. Welcome to ‘Jurassic Park’, an adventure focused on a wealthy entrepreneur secretly creating a theme park featuring the dinosaurs drawn from prehistoric DNA.

SPIDER-MAN 2 (2004)

Even superheroes can experience burnout. Going back and forth between being the person that no one sees versus being the person that people cannot take their eyes off of. The responsibility that adds intense pressure on your shoulders. An obligation that becomes too much to bear. You start to wonder what it would feel like to bear none of it for a day. A day that turns into a week. A week that turns into a month. A super powered man going through identity crisis who fails to understand that his powers have become bigger than him. The city he lives in is bigger than him. A person who needs to step out of their perspective to understand that it has never solely been about them. There will always be a hero inside of him. There will always be a hero inside of us. ‘Spider-Man 2’ swings with purpose as it follows Peter Parker battling through his identity as a person.

TOP GUN: MAVERICK (2022)

There is a certain speed to life. It is applied to everything that you do. It adapts itself to a work flow, forever adjusting to your limits. A speed that gets faster when you find yourself running to the beat of everyone else. Your feet represent the wings of a plane and your heart is the engine. A highly revered aviator who has carved out a career in being the best of the best. Once a student, forever a teacher to the people who stand behind him. The graduates who now look to him as a source of inspiration. That focus will drive them. It will incite their hunger to be the next best people in the game. The aviator who will take them to the mission that no living pilot has ever seen before. ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ follows the thirty year career of Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell as he finds himself training the next class.

TWISTERS (2024)

If you can feel it in your heart, chase it to the rhythm of the winds. We are natural chasers. We chase the elements of the earth that fascinate us. The risk is there yet the adrenaline triumphs the fear for safety. Running because it is all you know how to do. Running because you feel like you must before the tide inevitably turns against your favor. A striking tragedy that leaves a young, former storm chaser doubting her abilities as a weather analyst until she runs into a reckless social media star who has made a career out of chasing the storm. They become the witnesses to a weather phenomena that can only be seen to be believed. Chasing it. Riding it. Surviving it. ‘Twisters’ spirals into an intensifying storm season as an unlikely group of storm chasers come together for what turns into the fight of their lives.

THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)

It is a world running without the rules that bind it together. A world that is dripping in its chaos. A world that is unruly with madness, spearheaded by the people who seek to benefit from it. Raising the stakes to match the levels of crime that exceed to a higher magnitude. A need to dismantle the crime that plagues the streets. A partnership that forms at the hands of clearing out the darkness that dims the lights of the city. Rooted in its effectiveness while still becoming vulnerable as the prey in the reign of chaos that surrounds them. The hunters who still become the hunted while the criminal masterminds grow stronger in the outskirts of the streets that keep them hidden. Welcome to the world that spins in the darkness. The underbelly of Gotham city. ‘The Dark Knight’ lights up the story of Batman as he raises the stakes in his war on crime.

These blockbusters create more than moments. They create experiences. They create a need to see a film on the biggest screen possible because it creates an indescribable feeling inside of you. The feeling of seeing a film with a group of people who understand it because they have been brought there with the same purpose. It is the purpose of knowing that you will likely never see a film like this one because it packages itself differently to the rest. You feel it in the writing. You feel it in the direction. You feel it in the acting. The creatives felt it too when they came together to create something special. Creation that is on a magnitude that they haven’t felt, delivered on a scale that they have never experienced. Cinema knows how to craft a core memory for people because it encapsulates the films that are built on memory. The films that are built on moments. The films that are built on experiences.

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Space. A place that is vast in its beauty. A place that is unknown in its depth. They say that in space, no one can hear you scream and there is something calm and reserved in that feeling yet it is approached with an unnerving movement inside of you. Space holds the beauty with a terrifying emptiness attached to it. The feeling of knowing that you might be the only person there. Other life forms exist around you. They exist right beneath your feet. The planets that spin around at a close but still unreachable distance. The stars that shine brighter as they encompass the moonlit sky that maps itself all around you. For a moment, you know peace in the eyes of a galaxy that only surrounds itself around you. Cinema’s exploration of space has always evolved around a deep discovery. A discovery into the life that exists beyond our comprehension. The visuals that paint the story within the film, a story of a lone explorer searching for the things in the unknown that they cannot explain, they just need to see it. The answers that exist at the end of the journey that has taken so long to reach that place. Cinema’s curiosity that exists inside of space parallels our curiosity with the beauty of life. Films that tap into the understanding of finding beauty in the surface and a fundamental understanding of the world that exists above ours.

INTERSTELLAR (2014)

A man on a mission towards the unknown. A mission he cannot turn back from. A choice that he cannot change his mind on and a family that is forever changed because of it. It is the journey to the point of no return. Someone who shapes their whole life for this moment. Saying his goodbyes to the people he loved a long time ago because it gets easier for some people when they have allowed themselves the time to accept the inevitable when it comes knocking on their door. His family mourned their loss a long time ago when they knew it would come to this moment. The moment where time is sacred and how they spend it counts. It always did count. Mankind was never meant to die in the place that it was born in. ‘Interstellar’ follows a group of adventurers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole.

SOLARIS (1972)

Some planets encapsulate your nightmares. The places where everything that you have feared to be real, exists in that space for you to face alone. The place that orbits the death of what once had life inside of it. Everything that once had meaning. The love that dried out of it a long time ago. A psychologist sent to the doomed planet of Solaris with the purpose of trying to understand it. Dissecting the mental problems implemented inside of the cosmonauts who have been in his place. Their memories that have been repressed at the cost of their discovery. The planet that flows through it with the water rooted in repression and obsession that swirls around it. It’s the planet where life comes to it, never to be seen again. ‘Solaris’ navigates a psychologist who is sent to a space station orbiting the planet called Solaris in order to investigate the death of a doctor.

THE MARTIAN (2015)

Spending your life in the element of space where it has been all that you have known for the longest time. You begin to lose the memory of what home once looked like. You retrace the memories in the effort of bringing the familiarity back into your heart. Searching for comfort. The feelings that are still there inside of the ethos of your soul. Beginning the journey towards home allows the space to understand that there are some journeys that you are meant to take. A man coming back with more knowledge about the place that he has been missing. Coming back around as a changed person. Changed for good. ‘The Martian’ follows a doomed mission from Mars as a prolific astronaut is presumed dead after a fierce storm.

GRAVITY (2013)

Whatever you do, you should never let go. Letting go of the shuttle that keeps you alive thrusts you in the void of uncertainty with nothing to touch down onto. Forever swirling into the abyss. Forever spiraling into your choices that have brought you to this moment. The choice to embark on a mission that had great prospects attached to it. The prospect for a space engineer going on her first space mission while seeing her colleague out on his final expedition. Gradually passing the torch. Unaware of the path that you have set yourself onto. She now has to make a choice before it comes at the cost of her survival. The possibilities of a human life living in space are impossible. It is one giant leap toward the fight to survive. It creates the instinct inside of us to live. ‘Gravity’ follows two astronauts on a mission to get back to their space station after their shuttle is struck down.

PROJECT HAIL MARY (2026)

Waking up with no idea of where you are. Not knowing who you are. Realizing that you are in a space craft, 11 years away from earth with little understanding as to how you found yourself hurtling space. The pieces slowly come together inside of your head. The mental fragments. The memories that feel hard to place until you realize the fate of the world is resting on your shoulders. A scientist freshly pulled out of an induced coma as he struggles to find recollection on the mission that he finds himself embarking on alone. The people who sent him here knew that he was their only choice left. Searching for the astrophage that holds the weight of the world, finding company in the unlikeliest of life forms and forming the choice to make between going home and saving a newfound friend in peril. A scientist who finds himself shrouded at the proximity of the Petrova line. A shining supernova in the starlit sky. ‘Project Hail Mary’ spotlights the story of a scientist who wakes up in the depths of space with little understanding of who he is, with nothing but old memories to cling onto.

STAR WARS (1977)

In a galaxy far away, you are finding yourself living through the greatest tests that life in space can offer you in your existence. A princess captured and held hostage by the imperial forces who want their own form of power in their own hands. Forces that are run by their own greed. Their own flawed motives. An imperial empire putting the galactic infrastructure of their world at a peril that comes at the cost of how they rule over the people. The people suffering at the expense of it. The people who have to make their own rules and live by their own terms. It takes a young Luke Skywalker and a young Han Solo to join forces with a duo of lovable intelligent robots to rescue the princess in the effort of restoring the world. May the force be with them. May it guide them all the way. ‘Star Wars’ navigates the group of heroes racing against time to rescue Princess Leia from the danger she finds herself in.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)

The exploration of a lifetime can reveal a lot about civilization. A megascopic focus on life, directly propelled on attempting to understand society. A vessel for understanding humanity. The objects that manage to stay hidden beneath the surface when a human being isn’t searching in the right places. They often don’t search at all when they hold themselves at a disinterested distance. Fixing the distance in your head opens up the space that is fundamentally needed for discovery. It takes a special system to unearth the things in life that display themselves at a remarkable value. Advancement at the highest level. ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ tells the story of humanity as it underlayers a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface.

ALIEN (1979)

In space, you are at your most vulnerable. You are all alone. No one is coming to help you. No one can hear your screams. You are responsible for your own survival. You know your own instincts, being in tune with the traits that will get you out of your confinements. People only set out to take care of themselves. It is the mentality of every person for themselves. A space crew that realizes they may be in way over their heads. A crew discovers a chamber that hides a thousand of mysterious eggs. Eggs that hide creatures. Creatures who are disrupted and begin their birth, rising as a terrifying ordeal. They are the unstoppable force. They will test every bone in your body that contains your will to live. They will test you. They will consume you. ‘Alien’ follows a space crew trying to survive the birth of a Xenomorph inside of their spacecraft while spiraling into the depths of space.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)

We are never alone. There are other life forms that walk among us. We find ourselves in contact with them every single day. These are the close encounters that stay with us. It keeps us up at night, reasoning in our restless sleep. The atmosphere that is felt in the streets. That feeling that lies in the air as an electricity linesman feels drawn to the energy that he finds hard to explain. How do you explain the things that no one else can seemingly see? People can only see what they believe in. They have to believe in it. Belief has sustenance. That belief will get you somewhere. It sparks endurance. It creates hope. There is hope inside of us all. ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ navigates a man realizing that there is something in the air as the presence of UFOs begins to rise in the city.

BUGONIA (2025)

The higher someone gets on the ladder, the more alien they become. They alienate people. They alienate themselves. They disconnect from the human inside of them. Some people are not human at all. They realign themselves to connect with the true form of life that exists inside of them. It leads to the people who believe that they have been wronged towards making the wrong decisions in the root of their vanity, hysteria and conspiracy. Two young men who have spiraled into thinking that they have been tricked by the system. Two obsessive men who, at the result of their delusions, abduct a high powered CEO because they believe she isn’t who she paints herself to be. They believe in her having an extra terrestrial aura. A higher power that unveils itself through high stress. She isn’t like anyone of her kind. She is singular. ‘Bugonia’ focuses on the story of two men abducting a high profile CEO because they believe in her being an alien from another place in the world.

Cinema’s exploration of space represents a curiosity that lives inside of us. We are naturally fascinated by the world that exists above our own. The curiosity is peaked in the films that understand it. Films that tap into their fascination with the elements in the sky that cannot be explained. The characters that represent our own perspective as they behold the incredible sights that are seen to be believed. Plot-lines that connect the dots towards the planets that can be explained while they hold the unexplainable forms of life inside of their orbits. The visualizing shots that beautifully showcase the aesthetics of space that parallels our ability to find beauty in the places that we look inside of. Cinema encapsulates the beauty of space because it understands it. The films that vitalize the importance of opening our minds, warming up to the ideas of fascinating life propelling itself onto fascinating faces with intelligent states of mind. Cinema breathes a visual emotion into the films that enact their intelligence. The stories that showcase our high powered need to find the beauty in what we see. We are emotionally intelligent beings, forever fascinated by what we cannot explain.

A woman’s intuition to love another is a feeling that runs deep. It is love at first glance. A singular touch by another woman who feels as though she has been missing your love all this time. She has been missing someone like you. A love that has not been experienced because women yearn for the exact kind of love that they chase. Two women who know how to love intrinsically because they feel it on an emotional level that, for them, is difficult to explain. They feel it together. Cinema has always understood the priority in telling the love stories that have the edge of importance to them. Writing that has its sharp commentary, shaped in a significant lens of our culture within the current times. Characters who have so much emotional intelligence inside of themselves. The emotion that ripples through the films where the heart is at the forefront of the storytelling. Capturing the essence of what it means to love. The films with the essence of a woman’s heart instilled inside of it.

THE WATERMELON WOMAN (1996)

Sometimes you have to forge your own path. You have to create your own history. You have to preserve your current stance in life. You have to shape your future. Dismantling the past because it does not represent the culture of today yet the dismantling shows the little effect when we find ourselves regressing to the points of time for queer history, the time periods that we swore we would never have to see again with the right amount of change intact. There is no correct amount. There is only progression. Progress that takes time but sits in uncertainty. A woman who moves through her life with her own discernment about the future. We are given the space to discover her. She is given the space to discover herself. ‘The Watermelon Woman’ documents a young black lesbian filmmaker who probes into the life of the watermelon woman.

SINK OR SWIM (1990)

For a young girl, the experiences in her life have a profound effect in how they shape her as a person. Her perception on fatherhood, family, work and play inherently shape how she views the world from a closer distance. Individual moments that play pivotal roles. A life that continuously shifts when those moments begin to extend for longer during the course of her perspective. Her father who isn’t there as much as he chases his love of a career over having that same love in place for his family. A daughter who is deeply affected because of it. Creating the need to find love elsewhere. Sourcing the yearning through the people who reciprocate it because they understand it. It’s a culmination of lost dreams, a lack of understanding who it is that you are and a missing part of the identity that is meant to ground you. A young girl having to work through the emotional trauma of her childhood. ‘Sink or Swim’ follows the 26 short stories curated into one film about a girl describing her childhood.

MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (1931)

The physical touch of another woman can stir up so many emotions inside of you. The feelings that bubble up in the embrace of a person. A love that attaches itself to you, the perfect image of what you picture your ideal person to be. More than a dream when they stand in front of you, all in the flesh. You fixate on what love could be and what it could mean for you. Wondering what love might mean to the person you find yourself intimately attached to. A woman fascinated by the concept of love. A woman who is curious about what those ideals mean for her as a person. A woman who is attempting to find herself during the backdrop of the 1930s, a time that makes it increasingly restrictive to love another woman. You do not live for the times. You live for you. ‘Mädchen in Uniform’ follows a girl who romantically attaches herself to one of the teachers in her school.

DESERT HEARTS (1985)

It can take a divorce to open your eyes on the life that you are supposed to live. The life you have denied yourself in the effort of making a current lifestyle work when it was never meant to because you have never believed in it. You were never meant to live that way. Your eyes that find themselves navigating towards the direction of another woman who seems confident in the path that she walks on. You find yourself following that same path. A connection that brews on its own. A freshly divorced woman who begins to wonder about why she has wasted so much time in suppressing herself. It took one trip to Nevada for her to meet the people she would need to see. The person that stared back at her was a reflection of herself. ‘Desert Hearts’ navigates the journey of a woman fresh off the heels of a divorce who finds herself unexpectedly attracted to a carefree, spirited woman.

SAVING FACE (2004)

Navigating the complications of love that clashes with the cultural expectations that are lying on your shoulders with pressurized weight. Having to hide yourself away from the crushing demands of how people perceive you to be. The fickle judgement that tries to leech itself onto you but it has no place to cling on to when you are nurtured by a strong heart and an alert mind to draw back from. Navigating your relationship with your mother who finds herself in a similar predicament, having to hide her own love under the fears of being misunderstood. A daughter and a mother finding some common understanding in their shared complications with love. Love lives are made easier when you can find the space in your life to understand it freely. Living without the pressure that complicates it. ‘Saving Face’ journeys on a mother and daughter navigating their profound love lives.

PARIAH (2011)

Who can you become when you cannot be yourself? Where does the search for an identity begin? It starts with sourcing where your identity belongs to. Searching for a community where sexual exploration is welcomed with open arms and a smiling heart. Sexual expression begins when you can find the space to express who you are. It starts with sorting out the mess that life shoves under the bed. A Brooklyn teenager who is feeling lost about how to balance their identity alongside everything in their life that complicates it. A safety net has to be broken when it no longer has your best interest in mind. You become your own safety net. One that is in tune with your emotions. You find the way to become yourself by being true to yourself. ‘Pariah’ tells the story of a Brooklyn teenager who juggles their conflicting identities.

THE CHILDREN’S HOUR (1961)

A rumor cannot destroy what is beautiful when a bond is strong enough to survive it all. Attached to each other because you understand each other. You have an instrumental focus on what love is to both of you. Intimate bonds that are bound by intimate minds. The minds of people who have always loved each other yet lived in the times where a remote showcase of female driven, affectionate love led to an invasive perception. Perceived by the people who have never felt love. Perceived by the people who do not know what love is because they have never experienced it in the way that you have felt it. Two women who persevere because they know how to. Women who are mended by the love that keeps them going. ‘The Children’s Hour’ follows two women running a boarding school, accused by an unruly student of being lovers.

HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994)

Some angels are innocent and some angels just tell the truth. A teenager finding escapism through the literature that is handed to her by another. The result is a friendship between two girls gradually building into a deep love that is rooted in its intensity. An obsessive bond that is built with the real emotions behind it. The emotions of love that have always felt real for them because it had the space to be real. A love that feels like heaven because she will never experience anything else like it. Nothing else can compare to a love like this. A love that is tender. A love that is strong. A love that is obsessive. A relationship that vitalizes the importance of a friendship being the backbone for a love to flourish. Two girls who understand each other. ‘Heavenly Creatures’ navigates the story of a teenager who cements a bond with another girl through their love of fantasy and literature.

THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS (1990)

Finding yourself in the middle of nowhere can often direct you to the place that you need to be seen in. It takes a group of women finding themselves in isolation to truly understand what they have been missing. Navigating the outskirts of the Canadian countryside, searching for any sense of meaning towards the predicament that they find themselves in. Waiting for their rescue gives them the time to reflect on their lives. Reflecting on the time that they have spent. The regret that seeps in when they realize they have not been living to the fullest extent that they should have allowed themselves to lament through. Life can only be lived through how you decide to live it. Life can bring us to beautiful places. Life showed them the beauty of time. ‘The Company of Strangers’ tells the story of a busload of women who become stranded in the Canadian countryside.

CERTAIN WOMEN (2016)

It takes a strong will to forge your own path. To have faith in where you are going because you know that you are headed in the right direction. Three women who navigate their different dilemmas that are structured to exist within their varying circumstances in their lives; A lawyer experiencing a turbulent career, a wife and mother whose plans to construct their dream home reveals flaws in the marriage and a lonely ranch hand who forms an ambiguous bond with a young law student. Women who find themselves handling different hardships in a revolving world that spins in its purpose to push us through the hardest tests. They come out of it with a better understanding of who they are. Certain women are built with the tools of survival. Certain women who instinctively understand the fundamentals of living. ‘Certain Women’ showcases the stories of three women with their overlapping journeys for surviving their existence in their world.

Cinema has always shown strength in its stories about women. It showcases a fundamental strength for the stories of women loving each other. Writing that has always been powerful in constructing the scenes that have a reflection in the times that we live in. Actresses that understand their role to play in the characters that bear a resemblance to real people who have lived through the very scenes that are acted out on screen. A scene of two women that are inside the intimate embrace of each other. There is an emotional level of power in creating the films that depict people searching for their identities. There is authority in the commentary that attaches itself to the film. There is influence in the films that understand the commentary. The films that start with the liberation of the female characters inside of them. It parallels the liberation inside of every woman.

Coming into your own with the idea of who you have always meant to be. It is more than having an identity. It is about making a statement that your happiness cannot be ignored. Every day is a fight to live. Fighting for your right to exist. Telling the world that you have a hunger to be seen. The will to live for a life that will be well lived. A life that is full of potential. Cinema has showcased the determination in documenting the stories that breathe into the importance of trans people and their experiences in the world. Cinema that absorbs the art made from the real experiences that people have lived through the centuries of their existence. The films that unveil themselves in an archival lens, immortalizing the importance of how people have lived. To see how people persevered through their life. The best movements start with a camera. The best advocacy starts with a voice.

DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975)

It takes one day to change the course of everything that you know in life. That one day will incite reflection. The dog days of summer where people move through their lives just to get by. The footsteps that become a rhythm for a routine. A slow walk that shapes into a run just to keep up with the evolving world that still spins around the chaos of life. Two men who walk into a Brooklyn bank on August 22nd, 1972 when they have been broken beyond repair. A man who has felt broken by the system. A man who is desperate to save the life of his wife where love runs deep and the sacrifice of his own life isn’t something that he has to think twice about. His act of love. His act of wanting her to live the best life as her true self. ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ is based on the true story of two bank robbers who attempt a bank heist.

PARIS IS BURNING (1990)

Having the time of your life, living in your happiest space as who you have always known yourself to be; a human being who is capable of anything that they dream themselves to be. Finding your true soul is the key that unlocks the true version of yourself. Navigating the spaces of New York’s African American and Latinx Harlem drag ball scene that existed within the vibrant snapshot of the 1980s unveils an archival lens on how people lived through the formation of their identities. A story offering a personal portrait of people during the times of rival fashion ‘houses’ that were formed as chosen families, fierce contests and house mothers offering sustenance to people who need it the most while living in a world that is rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS and poverty. ‘Paris Is Burning’ is the story of the iconic voguers, drag queens and trans women who remained fierce through it all.

BREAKFAST ON PLUTO (2005)

Navigating your purpose as a transgender woman in the backdrop of the 1970s where it all feels as though the world is on the cusp of progress yet it is not quite at the place that it needs to be. You wonder if things are different elsewhere, if it is down to the place that you find yourself living in or if acceptance is in the long view mirror of things that are not yet achievable. It ignites a hunger for exploration. A need to find the people who might open up the space for acceptance. A young woman embarking on a journey to find her mother in the effort of understanding more about herself. A journey that takes its toll as it constantly reinvents her vision of the world. Varying versions of the same world that is inhabited on different planets. Breakfast on Pluto’ changes the worldview on the story of a transgender woman who leaves her small Irish town for London in the search of love and acceptance.

LAYLA (2024)

A struggling drag queen who finds the true testament of love can unveil a lot about themselves. It unveils so much about your will to survive through the emotional pain. Falling in love for the first time, a universal experience that shapes the perception of how a person views their version of love. Losing yourself in the name of love while finding the moment to rise back up as an re-adapted version of who you are. Finding yourself through the turmoil. A reshaped identity that is the product of a love that you needed to experience. A relationship that transforms you. Being okay with knowing that you will be changed. The world will change from adapting to a shifting perspective. Love is at the root of it all. ‘Layla’ follows the titular Arab drag queen who finds themselves falling in love for the first time.

JOYLAND (2022)

Breaking the patriarchy in order to discover who you are. Re-discovering who you need to be in order to live through the eyes of the identity that you want to form while navigating a suppressive system. A secret yearning for an identity that unveils itself as a transformative love between the youngest son navigating his fluid personality and a transgender starlet. A love born out of a deep understanding for each other. An insight of their shared struggle that takes its form in different plights. A hardship that makes identity stronger and the need to love fiercer. Nothing can break a person when they already feel unbroken. Breaking through the mold means breaking the system that has failed to break you. ‘Joyland’ shatters the perception on how a person lives in their truest form through the lens of a young man finding out what it means to love and live at a time where the formation of an identity is crucial.

WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR (2021)

There is a whole other world out there for you to explore. Finding your identity through the lens of online spaces where everyone is looking for communication in the hope of finding an answer to their internal questions. A teenager seeking out the online space of a role-playing game because immersion distracts from reality. Reality and fantasy are blurring the lines and the result is a world that shapes itself off of ideal attraction with none of the things in a person’s life to help ground them inside of the orbit that ignites their escapism. Getting lost in the space of horror that pulls you in with no intentions of unleashing you back into the world that you do not recognize anymore. ‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair’ follows a teenager who finds themselves getting caught up in a role-playing horror game.

TANGERINE (2015)

All some people know is a life of struggle from the earliest that they can remember being alive. You are built for hardship. Nothing can break you when you have already been put through the limit of the things that could. Surviving because you must. Living because you know how to. A life that feels like it is too much at times for a woman fresh out of prison trying to settle back in. Navigating a space of dishonest people reignites her own truth within herself. She is built with a stronger purpose that reveals itself to be guidance out of the life that she has known and lead her into a life with better prospects. A life with people who are true in their intentions. Her intuition will lead the way. ‘Tangerine’ tells the story of a woman and her best friend embarking on a trip that is rooted in searching for the truth.

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (1999)

There is an actress in all of us. There is a woman at the root of every man’s inception. The strength that persists in pushing a woman to keep going in the face of wondering when she has passed the limit of what she can bear. A mother who finds herself in the midst of grief, needing to find her husband, the father that her son never knew, in order to deliver the news of his death, news that would pain any parent to hear. Reuniting with an old friend because familiarity in people brings back a sense of comfort. Befriending new souls who give her the motivation in her heart to pursue the answers that she seeks. Yearning reshapes her. Grief reinvents her. ‘All About My Mother’ navigates the journey of a mother looking to relocate the estranged father of her son.

LAURENCE ANYWAYS (2012)

Impossible love that can change you for the better when it shifts the places that desire has filled itself into. Reinventing what love means to you when you have found it in the person who challenges your inner thoughts in every passing moment. More than a relationship, it is an experience to learn about what you have not taught yourself to learn. Opening doors in your head. The more you know, the more you grow into the person that you need to be. Inhabiting the space that love needs you to be in as it allows moments of true connection to be planted. The best flowers are given the time to grow with a strong foundation underneath them. Flowers that represent your connection. Life is the foundation. ‘Lawrence Anyways’ is the story of an impossible love between a woman named Fred and a transgender woman named Laurence who has an inner desire to be herself.

BAMBI (2013)

Born in one vessel, yearning to be in another when you know something within you does not feel content. You intrinsically feel it in the way that you move. In how you think. In the way that you feel in your skin. Unleashing it through exploring your identity in how it is meant to be explored. Exploring the feelings that have always meant to be felt. A woman finding her home in the art of Cabaret where judgement has no place in its halls. A place where true identity reigns to a beautiful space of acceptance and healing. Where you can perform as you are to the people who fit into your wavelength. The people who match the energy because they encapsulate it. A woman who is in the space she was meant to be in. She found her home in the arts. ‘Bambi’ is the film profiling the life of Marie-Pierre Pruvot, an Algerian born trans woman who had a long and prominent career as a dancer and showgirl in Paris in the 1950s.

Cinema displays itself as an archive for films that document the trans experience. Films that show the heart of the people who have always existed in this space of life. Stories that hit hard in their scope because they reflect from real moments. Characters that depict their own journeys into knowing who they are parallel to the people who have been fighting for their own rights to exist as who they want to be. Their own identities. Fighting to live as they are. A hunger for their independence. An insatiable feeling for their rights to live in how they deserve to live as people with dreams for their futures. The documented films that serve as a time capsule at a time where it is needed to be witnessed. The times we find ourselves living in that reignite the passion for creating the voices that need to be heard. Advocacy on the walls that needs to be written and the laws that are rewritten because of the voices that raise them. Cinema creates the space where they can be seen. The films that raise their voices. The films that create them.

There is a sense of freedom in the feeling of being fluid in your sexuality. You are shedding the paranoia of living up to other people’s standards. You don’t feel locked behind the glass that you have been trying to smash through to reconnect with yourself. You are taking the reins on your lust for life. Re-defining what it means to live authentically. Love that is strong willed because you have a strong heart. Healing wounds that you have not had the chance to heal. A healed heart parallels a healed love and a nurtured mind. A fluid love allows the space to be open for exploration. Cinema has always been sexually fluid in the stories it has told on the screen. Stories that showcase a need for characters to open up with an eagerness to find themselves. Documenting the stories through the lens of gender non-conformity and fluidity. Archiving the real experiences. Films that have been able to start a movement.

SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)

Disguising yourself just to move through the next stop that you feel like you have to run to parallels the need to disguise yourself in life. The complications that arise from being able to express yourself at a time period where expression feels frowned upon yet the confident ones who are content in their fluidity move through with an unbothered approach that feels contagious towards the people who yearn for their own confidence. Some people love the heat that comes with that feeling of knowing you are on the right path. For a woman like Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, life becomes easier when she stops putting on the show that other people want to see and starts performing in the identity that she is comfortable in. Trailblazers who don’t need to wait for anyone to understand their vision. Some choices don’t need to be explained when you are choosing to live a better life. ‘Some Like It Hot’ is the trailblazing story of two musicians on the run who discover the true meaning of what identity means to them.

FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES (1969)

A bar owner provides a space for everyone to be who they want to be. Exploring the intimacy of other people. Exploring themselves. Learning about the definition of what love could be for them while setting the boundaries that allow it to exist in the way it needs to. A woman being in tune with herself ignites a jealousy in people who lack the awareness inside of themselves. People who lack confidence spend their whole lives yearning for it. They spend a lifetime trying to find it. It arrives in unexpected ways, catching you off guard with the pride that you don’t see coming. You know when you have found your confidence when you start to feel different in your skin. ‘Funeral Parade of Roses’ follows the story of a woman running an LGBTQ+ bar as she starts to realize how much she has missed out on connection.

THE BIRDCAGE (1996)

Being able to come as you are with no regrets. Soaking in the choices that you didn’t make sooner when you realized you were not happy living as a shell of the person that you were always meant to be. Shedding a skin that you do not recognize in order to adopt one that represents who you want to be in this short life. You know what you have lived through. You know the strength that it has taken to get to this point. Getting through it all in order to get to the other side of the sunset. A glimmering sun that reflects your shining soul. ‘The Birdcage’ showcases a need to come into your own as it follows the journey of a gay cabaret owner and his drag queen partner as they agree to put up a false heterosexual front so that their son can introduce them to his future in-laws.

VELVET GOLDMINE (1998)

Leaving your expectations of what you assume your life to be in order to embrace the full scale of your gender fluidity. Scaling back on the life that you used to live for the one that you seek, a life that is quiet. A life that is intimate in its privacy. A life that is reserved from public attention. The feeling of finally being able to hear your own thoughts. No longer finding yourself in the space of needing to perform for the sake of anyone’s pleasure. A glam rock enigma who found his calling outside of the public eye juxtaposing the journalist who cannot accept that someone would disappear from a life that many would never experience in theirs. Coming to uncover the truth, staying for a transformative lens and leaving a little changed from it all. ‘Velvet Goldmine’ navigates an investigative journalist in an assignment to uncover the truth about his idol.

GIRLHOOD (2014)

You will never know the full extent of someone’s story until they feel comfortable enough to tell you. In their full scale of comfort, they will show the inner parts of themselves. The traits that make them who they are, the people that you treasure. Meeting people can change your life when they are exuding an aura that awakens something inside of you. The story of a girl trying to find herself in the mode of thinking that disguise is the answer when it is just holding her back. Yearning to be accepted by others. The need to feel seen by other people contrasts the need to live for herself. Hiding in what you deem as approval creates a false sense of identity. The real formation of acceptance starts with your own understanding of who you are. You need to live for yourself. ‘Girlhood’ tells the story of a young girl who feels unaccepted until she is drawn to a teenage girl gang who eventually take her seriously.

VICTOR/VICTORIA (1982)

A woman seeking out the work inside of her soprano profession leads to her disguising herself under a male/female persona in order to feel successful which dissects the complicated double standards that exist within gender roles. Opening up to the idea that a true connection is based on who you are, not the labels that try to attach themselves to you. You start to wonder about the identity that you find yourself keeping. Bouncing back and forth between two doors that contain the different sides of who you are. The face that you live in. The face that you masquerade in. They blur the lines, the result is an identity that fits because it was made for you. Opening perspectives while shifting a whole worldview of what you believe you once knew. ‘Victor/Victoria’ narrows in on the journey of a struggling soprano who finds work as a male/female impersonator.

MADAME SATA (2002)

Hustling to live. Dreaming to be who you wish to be. Being the devil’s advocate in the heat of survival. Adopting the persona that you find the most comfort in. The persona that allows you to explore the inner workings of who you are. Finding that you become the person that you want to be through the art of letting go. The art of cabaret holds the key to true liberation. The art of expression that will lead you to freedom. For a man living in intense struggle, it will lead him to serenity. A moment of peace in a world that bears none of it. A moment of discovery in a world that tries to stifle it. A lifestyle of exploration because what is inside of you can never be killed. ‘Madame Satã’ follows the story of a man seeking expression in cabaret, in the backdrop of Rio de Janeiro in the 1930s where independence was suppressed.

MA VIE EN ROSE (1997)

Sometimes, you know who you want to be. You have known it from an early age. Your earliest memory encapsulates who you could become. You yearn to be what you have envisioned yourself to be. Ludovic, a young transgender girl exploring the formation of her identity believing that she was always meant to identify as a girl and would prefer to live as one. A feeling that is meant to be miraculous for her yet only leads her to isolation when she realizes that she is not living in a space of support. The people who are meant to surround her with love, only try to restrict her identity. Escapism turns into a bubble of coping mechanisms which turns into an avoidance towards what she feels she cannot face. The true formation of identity comes from the life experiences that shape it. Facing it leads to embracing the places that your heart leads you to and understanding who you were always meant to be. ‘Ma Vie En Rose’ tells the story of a little girl’s first experience with what identity means to her.

SORRY, BABY (2025)

Figuring out your place in the world. Emotions that are all over the place as you work out what it all means to be on your own. The friends that surround you with concern because they cannot quite connect with where you are at emotionally. You might not know where you are on an emotional level. A feeling that ties itself to a traumatic, altered moment in your life. A person who feels stuck, everyone around her moves on while she finds herself unable to incite a change in her life despite the parameters of what she would assume success should be. There is no textbook on how to deal with the pain that is rooted in trauma. Mentally stuck in time, at a crossroads at what your next move should be in the effort of mending your heart. Life can be beautiful but it can also be cruel in the blows you get dealt with. It can take a while for things to get back on track. ‘Sorry, Baby’ details how a woman’s life is derailed by trauma as she tries to reconnect with herself.

Cinema showcases the beauty in a fluid identity. The films matter in how they display discovery in an unfiltered lens. Characters that we relate to because they parallel our own experiences with how we view ourselves. It has a raw effect on how we view the differences between what is on screen versus what we attribute to be realistic emotion. Stories that move us to tears because, for a moment, we remembered what it felt like to be back in a space that didn’t fit where we wanted to go. LGBTQIA+ cinema does more than putting movements onto the paper, it is documenting stories at a time where we live in the crucial landscape to tell them. Our bodies are the witness to the stories that deserve to be told, the words that are meant to be heard and the faces that are meant to be seen.

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That is why we believe in Film Freeway being the perfect place to find the best talent and give their stories a chance to be seen in the best medium. Film Freeway is the destination for your work to be seen and through using our discount code SUMMERSRIFF for 30% off from June 19th to July 19th, you will have access to the best selection at the best price. They are the curators of festival selection. They help creatives to forge their own path and select the best festivals for them. Those steps that you take open the door for success.

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Love in all of its unexposed intimacy gives a person the space to be honest with themselves. A moment to be fragile. A moment to be vulnerable. To know that the person you are pouring so much of yourself into, is reciprocating it by being on a similar level of honesty with you. Sharing the load and balancing the differences as you both showcase your unfiltered personality traits. Showcasing the different aspects of what vulnerability looks like. You show your love by simply being there. Listening to the unexposed thoughts as both of you spend your time intimately venting your frustrations with how the world has perceived you. A partner who can listen opens up to a space for exploration. You will find that so much of your endurance is built on what you let pass you by and what lines you will not let be crossed. These films have cemented themselves in exploring the stories of the star-crossed lovers exploring their undiscovered limits of what they can survive through. The hidden limits of their heart unveiling the destination of where they need to be seen.

THE HISTORY OF SOUND (2025)

The sound of knowing your soulmate from the moment they walk into the room. The rhythm in both of your hearts starts to sync together. One singular choice that leads to a lifetime of yearning that seeps itself in pain. The sinking feeling of knowing that you have met this person at the wrong time. You can hug each other but you cannot embrace each other. You can feel the difference. It latches itself onto your heart in the effort of breaking it but strong hearts do not crack under the surface, they continuously heal. A love that finds itself forced behind a barrier where distance grows in between what you want and what you are forced to live with. The price of a love that you will never experience again. Two men who have brewed an immense love for each other. Two men who are forced to drift apart when the circumstances of their love create a rift in their survival. It is the testament of surviving. ‘The History of Sound’ navigates the complicated love of two men who find themselves bonded by the music that rises from their souls.

PILLION (2025)

The exploration of a love that you have not experienced before can be the thing that sets a spark under your feet. Finding yourself interested in the intimacy of a love that might be temporary yet it changes your life permanently. The intimacy of a love that you have never felt in your life. There has never been anything like it because you have never had the opportunity to live it. It opens up the doors to trying something new. Unlocking confidence that has been buried inside of you. You still feel that there is a slight disconnect from the person that has shown you a whole new version of a world you had never seen. Some people are closed books because they have seen enough in their life to know when it is time to stop letting people in. They know when it is time to close the door on what love could have been for them but it never had enough of the fruition to be something sustainable in their life. Their version of love is hidden behind their muted moments of communication. A story of two men navigating their romantic encounters in the way they know how to, different paths that lead back to each other. The bare similarities that lead to a connection. ‘Pillion’ ignites an unlikely love story between an ordinary man and a mysterious biker who lives a vastly different lifestyle to him.

A SINGLE MAN (2009)

Dwelling on the past, uncertain about the future. The inability to understand where life is taking you leads to a daunting feeling for a person who is yearning to live the life that he remembers with fondness. We spend our lives deep in our own idealistic control. Where we see ourselves in the future aligns with who we see ourselves loving. Those people match up to a significant point in our lives where everything feels certain before a singular event leads a person to drowning in their uncertainty. The thought of being unable to see yourself in a futuristic time that you have imagined yourself inside of creates a terrifying prospect for a man who lives out his day through pondering about the past. Unable to detect what life means to him because he lost it a long time ago. Rooting the despair in his life to the loss of his husband which creates a shell of what life should be. Sadness that attaches itself to the grief of a life that he lost. A life of a man he will never see again. A love that lit up the life into his eyes, immortalized into the memories. ‘A Single Man’ follows a professor throughout his day with a tinge of sadness from how life has lost its merit for him.

BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER (1999)

Sexuality can be a fluid navigator in the directions it can send you down. Exploration can parallel the experimental. We are experimental beings. We know what we are looking to seek out. We know what is in our hearts. Finding ourselves stuck in a point of time while craving the connection from the person we find ourselves drawn to. Seeking out a love that is unfiltered, feeling seen in not having to censor yourself from experiencing the love that you often dream about. The dreams that stem from being tired in how you are dragged into every direction except to the place that you want to be in. A woman who is tired of people who think they can make the choices for her. Her need to love doesn’t come from a place where it can be chosen, it is by her own nature. Her own desire to be herself. ‘But I’m a Cheerleader’ dissects how being allowed to love can set you free as the story follows a woman who tries to break the cycle of controlling nature in her life.

CLOSE (2022)

A love born in summer, with all of the time it needs to fruition into something more yet it can also be ripped away without notice. A space where time stops because nothing else matters in the moment. You are with the person that matters the most to you. No one else can pull you out of the feeling that runs through your veins with electricity. You are where you want to be. It feels great until you find yourself in the thick of perception. People who insert themselves into the boundaries that they have no place inserting themselves into. There is strength in a young love that flourishes despite the ground that it is pushed into. It has a magnitude of reasons to come back through the soil. That soil blooms into life. Life that preserves two young boys seeking their foundation. ‘Close’ tells the love story of two boys who fall in love in the midst of their ideal summer until they come back around to deal with the complications of life.

MONSTER (2023)

They are the people we often dream about at some point in our lives. The people who feel as though they are meant to be in our space yet they are at a distant reach. They hold out for them, yearning for a singular embrace but you are met with a slight disconnect. Running to keep up yet never quite matching their pace as they run towards something that only they can see. You adapt to your speed when you readjust the reasons for what you are running for. A mental hurdle that stops a person from leaping into the arms of a life that is in their peripheral vision. A young boy reaching out and being met with the failure of being seen by everyone else except the person who has been running alongside him. Detached from the people who are meant to understand him and reattached to the person who has lived through the similar circumstances. Surviving through the turmoil because you are bonded by the love that gives it meaning. Love that makes your life worth it. ‘Monster’ navigates the coming of age between two young minds who are intricately bonded through their evolving experiences.

SHELTER (2007)

There is love in being true to yourself which opens up to a full moment of vulnerability. A relationship that benefits from being a two way street in terms of raw truth. Two people who shared their difficulties by bearing the load on their shoulders. A weight that defines how a relationship is maintained. It takes two people to iron out their efforts in the hope of keeping their love afloat. Without the love that matters, they would drift apart at the sea that exists within their soul. Giving until there is nothing left to give because they put everything onto the table just to see it toss over the contents of your heart. Two men who realize all they have is each other. ‘Shelter’ focuses on the message of being yourself as it follows the story of a man navigating what love means to him.

BEAUTIFUL THING (1996)

Everyone deserves a fairy tale love. The love that makes you feel good in your heart. Love that gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. Sprinkled through an adulthood that does not feel daunting. Edging towards a new level in your life, one that is adaptable to how you are living. For three teenagers experiencing what it all means, a long summer can unveil a lot about yourself. It can unveil how you want to live. Life can be revealing. It can reveal the love that was always there, they just needed to see it. Seeing it for what it is worth means believing that there is a version of it that exists out there for you. Reaching for it. Grasping it. The world is in your hands. ‘Beautiful Thing’ navigates the story of three teenagers who enter the stages of their adulthood and the lessons that can be learned from it.

TORCH SONG TRILOGY (1988)

Looking for love and living for acceptance at a time where both are not attainable in the same space when it means wanting to live your life unapologetically. You want to live in an unfiltered lens where nothing about love is censored. It is how you were meant to live. It is how life should be experienced. Loving the people around you in the best way that you know how to give it. Loving yourself in the form that should never come at the cost of losing your identity. You love yourself for who you are because of the identity that shaped you. A man experiencing love through the lens of his queer identity, the type of love that re-applies the will to live through it can be the same love that changes a man who wants to believe that it is out there for him. Life can set you up just to knock you down. Survivors know how to get back up again. ‘Torch Song Trilogy’ Follows the life of a man looking for love and acceptance in 1970s England.

DISOBEDIENCE (2017)

We defy everything in our life in the name of love. Hoping for the connection to be stable enough that there might be something to dream for. It ignites a confidence inside of us. It pushes us onto a search for love that gives us a purpose. We are often people who do not want to exceed outside of our comfortable parameters when it comes down to romantic boundaries yet we need to take a moment to do the uncomfortable thing that we have avoided for so long. Living in the way that we see ourselves existing can be its own act of defiance. Life is defiant. The story of two women who defy the existence of living every day. Living their life that exudes confidence that is achieved by allowing themselves to love. Living their life in content measure. Living in their own terms of what it means to live. ‘Disobedience’ follows the story of a woman processing the loss of her father as she navigates the complications of a community who has shunned her out and re-igniting her passionate relationship with a childhood friend.

Film exposes the secret ingredient to love is blunt honesty. Honesty that exists within the characters that navigate the complexities of their identity built with love. To be honest to themselves parallels to how they will thrive when they find the space to live inside of the happiest version of themselves. The people around them who they refuse to let dictate how they should live. Cinema that shows how you exist within your body to make your own choices. Exercising the motion of love in the stories that move with an unfiltered, unexposed lens that reflects the culture that we live in. Culture that thrives because it has been given the space to. A space that evolves because it was given the time to. Films can be seen as a time capsule due to the reflection that it adapts from. We are living in times where it is vital to be in touch with who we are emotionally. To be in touch with who we are intrinsically. We are all emotional human beings looking for the love that lights our soul and the heart that leads the way.

Feeling seen aligns with feeling known. To be known for who you are as a human being. Who you have always wanted to become from your earliest memory. To be known for how you want to live authentically. The love that rests in the crevices of your heart. Having to hide the parts of your identity that show your beautiful traits that build up to a personality that is instinctively you, creates pain that does not rest in your mind and soul. It eats away as you get to the point of wondering how much you can resist until you admit that the way you live is a shell of the life that you could be living if you stopped caring about perception. No one can steal the shine of your identity away from you. A lightness that reflects its influence on everyone else when they realize that confidence can spread like wildfire. Your confidence within yourself influences the confidence in them. You open the doors in your mind when you finally feel good in your skin. The cinematic stories that glow in their exploration through the characters that glow in their confidence can reflect the inner glow in us. The characters that flourish, to feel the love of the person that has been waiting to love them. Through watching these characters find themselves, it opens up a conversation within us to feel comfortable enough to do the same. The films that show there is comfort in confidence. There is content in loving ourselves. It starts with a strong identity. It starts with finding out what it means to have an identity.

BOTTOMS (2023)

Empowering the women around you starts with empowering yourself. Love grows when your confidence can grow in the way it is meant to be seen. Blooming in the way it is meant to be felt. Life displays a competitive edge that bleeds through your coming of age. Love can feel competitive. You are competing with the identities of people who haven’t found themselves yet. You wonder how you are supposed to make sense of your own identity when the people around you seem to be lost in theirs. There is power in a lack of direction when you can redirect the route to the person that you have wanted to be. Navigating towards the person that you feel an intense love for. Loving someone in the way that you have wanted to be loved. ‘Bottoms’ navigates the trials and tribulations of high school as two girls try to figure out the messiness of their lives.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024)

You bleed your heart into being the best at what you do yet you don’t realize that you are spiraling because of it. Soon shaped into an identity that feels new to you but it has a familiarity to it, you don’t entirely recognize yourself but you know the feeling that sits inside of you, you have known that feeling for a long time. You like the feeling of your newfound skin, it feels like an ecstasy that exists in your life. The high of chasing your desire to be stronger, a relationship that finds itself to be bound by the choices made by a woman who may not be in the soundest of minds to try and alter her life while in an altered state of mind. She doesn’t want to shift from the space she is in. A moment in time where it all feels blissful before that bliss turns into agony. A moment where none of it matters. To her, love can heal anything. ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ follows the story of two women who fall hard in love while dealing with the ramifications of their romance igniting violence.

AMMONITE (2020)

Finding love at the root of your identity, at a time where it feels intense to be who you want to be and love who you want to love. Sourcing what love means to you while having to be silent about your cries in wanting to feel heard. The corners you find yourself turning to just to feel something, show themselves to be dead ends. Allurement that turns into suffocation from being pushed into the corner after an extensive period of time. The person you find the most comfort in, is the person you are not meant to be seen with. Love knows no limits. Love knows no bounds. Love will not be stopped by a hurdle that can be jumped through in a matter of a second. Women who are strengthened by their love for each other because they have already felt the cold hand of loneliness and they know it is a temporary setting. A bond is for both of their lives. ‘Ammonite’ focuses on the story of two women who develop an intense relationship in 1840s England.

THE WORLD TO COME (2020)

Close connections can bring you to the edges of your worldview. They can shift your perspective. It shows you what you have been missing in your soul. You realize what you have been voided of in your life when you open yourself up to the love that you have been yearning for. Love that has meaning to your purpose. Coming into contact with a woman who feels like she has been waiting for you all this time because you have been waiting your whole life for a love that feels fruitful. A love that feels complete. A love that feels like you earned it. Love prospers in isolation. Isolated love grows stronger because it has all the time it needs to breathe on its own. ‘The World to Come’ tells the story of two women closing in on their strong connection while dealing with their isolating circumstances as they navigate life in the American frontier.

QUEER (2024)

Love can put your identity into an altered state. Love sits in its own elusive state. You spend so much time looking for the love in someone who stands from a distance, forever hard to read. You believe that you are ready to love them but they are not ready to love you back. It is a connection that severs itself over and over just to remind you that the version of love that you seek so desperately will forever be approaching you at a distant pace. The closer you get, the further away it feels. It feels as if you are stuck in limbo where everything feels spaced out. Your mind is disconnected. Your body is floating out of your control. You are not in reach of your soul until you can connect to yourself. ‘Queer’ gives philosophical notions on a man’s quest to find love within a stranger who feels closed off on the surface.

ALL OF US STRANGERS (2023)

We are all strangers searching for our sense of what love could be. We want to be loved. We want to feel loved. Being loved means having sustenance in yourself. It brings light into the home that you come back to. Someone who understands your flaws and accepts you for who you are because they have been in the space that you find yourself occupying. Knowing how it feels to hurt in the name of love. All it takes is a strange encounter with a person who could be the one to love you in the way that you want to experience it. Someone who could be the love of your life if you let them in enough times to love you. They want to love you, they’re just not sure how to. It starts with loving yourself. Fulfilled love unlocks what you believe you have missed without it being present. ‘All of Us Strangers’ navigates the journey of a man’s need for love that is bigger than himself as he finds himself intertwined with his mysterious neighbour while building his fractured personal life back together.

MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969)

Everyone seeks companionship. Everyone needs a companion in a way that is suited to them. Some people need it to distract themselves from their loneliness which they won’t admit is slowly eating them alive. Stubbornness that is working against you, a trait that does not need to see you do well because it gains so much from watching you circle around in your repetition. A lone ranger chasing what he would deem his version of love to be until he meets his match in a mysterious man who takes up the form of intense companionship. A bond that can take this lone ranger to places he has not mentally allowed himself to step foot into. Opening up your mind allows you to take steps into a life that has been waiting for you to see clearly. ‘Midnight Cowboy’ tells the story of a lone ranger who can never keep a relationship with a woman until he finds a companion in the form of a mystery man who joins him on his journey.

Y TU MAMÁ TAMBIÉN (2001)

Life is always teaching you. You are always learning from what you experience in your life. Every moment opens up to every lesson. There is a first time in everything that you do. You learn for the first time. You love for the first time. You are living for the first time in a long time. Struggle lives in its own lesson. There are times in your life where it feels like you are experiencing nothing but hardship. You adjust because you have to. You survive because you need to. For two young boys, their experiences together shape them for what their life could become. Their perspectives shape their identities for a journey that they were always meant to embark on. Life has been shaping them for that moment. They are built for survival. ‘Y tu mamá también’ is a film showcasing the lives of two teenagers who go through a series of experiences together and come out of it with an intense bond and a strong admiration for each other.

JE TU IL ELLE (1974)

A singular breakup can set you on the course for change. It can awaken something inside of you. The feeling of knowing that you are wasting tears on a person who is not occupying the shared space of pain. A person who would not take a second glance at the destruction they leave behind after bulldozing the foundation of what they built with you. You know you deserve better. A universal experience that allows you to sit in contemplation about what you need to change in your life. It takes a moment of crashing out about the events in her life that allows this woman to clear her mind and to understand that sadness can be temporary but it can lead you to opening the doors that would be left unopened otherwise. She finds that there is clarity in what a woman goes through in order to mend her heart. ‘Je Tu Il Elle’ follows the focus of a woman going through a breakdown from the inciting incident of a breakup.

I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024)

Our identity is often paralleled with our need for escapism. We seek out the modes of fiction as a need to escape from what we live through. Finding comfort in the fiction you see on the screen because the character parallels your choices. They parallel how you often view yourself in a wide lens. Characters that are based in our own identities. Instinctively, they have an impact on us because they are steeped in our realism. The prospect of being able to live in your favourite fictional world, one that is a heightened version of life without the sides of it that we don’t want to see. We don’t want to live through another version of our realities when we are trying to escape from them. A teenager using a mysterious late night show with a supernatural underbelly as a means to avoid their life. The fiction places a mirror against the non-fiction. That mirror cracks when his reality begins to break. ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ spins the story of a teenager being introduced to a elusive and mysterious TV show showcasing the vision of a supernatural world that exists beneath their own.

There is strength in knowing who you want to be. There is power in identity that is allowed to encompass confidence through everything that it should be. Films that show the beauty in what you could have. Characters that need to find themselves before they are ready to find other people. It is about more than matching a wavelength, it is about balancing it. Maintaining it. You are nurturing an identity that is constantly adapting from how we move through life. Cinema balances its own wavelength by creating stories that resonate with us. Stories that connect with our experiences. We relate to it because we have lived it. We live through the characters who experience what they know their version of love to be. Love without needing judgement from the world because it was never the world’s business to know. We start out as strangers looking for a connection. Film that showcases how a connection is vital in our experiences. Connection can be all that we know. Connection allows us to love. Connection allows us to live.

It took the efforts of three men, directors Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki, with a dream to create the beautifully effective, unique and singular animation style that helped to solidify a stylistic art form that would stand out from the rest. Founded in 1985 in Koganei, Tokyo, Studio Ghibli has managed to create and uphold a strong presence within the industry due to how they have baked powerful storytelling with the necessary lessons to learn from life into their films. They have taught children how to dream. They showed children that their adventures have purpose. It is okay to allow themselves to be vulnerable. Their films give people a better sense of purpose. Art that teaches the meaning of what life should be. On the outside, it is a creative medium in cinematic storytelling. On the inside, it is an educational art form. Animation that showcases the beauty of our lives. Films that allow us to keep in touch with our intellectual minds. They teach us to learn. They teach us to absorb. They teach us what it means to dream.

SPIRITED AWAY (2001)

We have a natural ability to investigate our curiosities, to follow the uniqueness that spikes our interest. Curiosity is a powerful theme within a Hayao Miyazaki film as he understands the ways in how to direct what wonder looks like to our eyes and how to do it effectively within a creative scale. More than a mere theme in being the hero saving the day, it is a pitch in how to save yourself. Identity is shaped by knowing what to do with it. For a ten year old Chichiro, a trip with her parents to a supernaturally inhabited park turns into an effort to save the people who mean the most to her. It is a quest for hope with the spirited animation that saves us all. ‘Spirited Away’ follows a young girl who must work to free her parents after they have been turned into pigs.

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE (2004)

Jealousy can be spiteful in your heart. Jealous of the bond between two people because you have never experienced what it feels like to be loved in that capacity. You have never had it. You want what they have, failing to understand that friendships are a build up of trust. Love is just the backbone that carries it all. Hayao Miyazaki understands the message that strong bonds lead to stronger minds. It develops strong connections. It gives people something to believe in. People yearn for their belief in something. Sophie’s closeness to Haul, a wizard, leads the Witch of Waste down a path motivated by jealousy to turn Sophie into an old lady. A strong aspect within a Studio Ghibli film is the wonders of being yourself. You are at your most authentic when you are not living for other people. You live for you. In ‘Haul’s Moving Castle’, Sophie must find a way to break the spell that has been cast upon her.

PONYO (2008)

Lost from the ocean with no idea on how to get back home can often parallel people feeling lost in themselves. Some people have their reasons for escapism. Gifted with her transformation and created by her desire while navigating her new set of circumstances, Ponyo, a gold fish-like creature, finds a strong desire within herself to be a human girl which comes against the scenarios of what her magic has been used for and why it was taught to her. The gift of protection finds itself to be weakened under the exposed moments of forced vulnerability. Hayao Miyazaki’s focus with this film is to display the tale of often wanting what you know is out of your reach. It is not impossible, it is about figuring out the ways in how you can make it possible while keeping your spirit in tact. There is happiness to be found in sourcing who it is that you want to be. ‘Ponyo’ navigates the story of a young boy who rescues a fish trapped in a bottle off of the shore.

KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE (1989)

It can be difficult to find your own sense of community in a place that feels so established. It is the type of feeling that washed over your body whenever you step into a daunting space. It can be hard to know where you should start. That overwhelming overload inside of your head telling you that you are doing too much. Hayao Miyazaki delivers a strong message in how it is okay to feel lost when you are at the early stages of finding your way into your own independence. Blocking out the voices that want you to take notice of their empty words when the only voice that you need to be taking note of is your own. Even young witches need the time to find themselves. A young girl feeling down on her luck as the road ahead of her feels as though it is a long, unwinding one. Those hues of blue will clear up soon because there is a community waiting for you. ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ focuses on a young witch seeking out her own community.

CASTLE IN THE SKY (1986)

Sometimes, the people who come from nowhere have the ability to change your life. They say the sky is limitless in what it can bring down to you when you feel the soles of your feet touching the ground. Good fortune and good karma often parallel each other in the story of a person’s search for their purpose. Hayao Miyazaki is the master at showcasing the humanity of characters, he knows how to implement those elements in a film that is guided by the heart. Clutching onto the crystals that form a path of finding the places that need to be seen to be believed. Dreams that give the characters their agency on the backdrop of animation that captures the heart and influences the soul. ‘Castle in the Sky’ is the story of a young boy and girl with a crystal who must race against time in the search for a floating castle.

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (1988)

The symbol of a firefly can navigate you out of your struggles and towards a better life in the midst of struggles that may feel like they will never budge. The fireflies are a beacon for the better times ahead of you. A light that will soon shine on your face. It just takes a while for you to feel it. Directed and written by Isao Takahata, the film delivers the message of how hardships are temporary, even in the moments where they feel permanent. Set during the war, following the lives of 14 year old Seita and his sister Setsuko as they try to balance the hard setbacks in their life alongside the turbulent relationship with their aunt. They are just trying to survive. They just want to make it to tomorrow. The ever present message of never taking what you have for granted lives through the animation that is full of warmth and the writing that heals you from the inside. ‘Grave of the Fireflies’ tells the story of two siblings who are orphaned after their mother is killed in an air raid during the war.

THE BOY AND THE HERON (2023)

Life will always find a way to start again. The ability to begin again is a beautiful reminder in how life does not have to be one narrow street. Different streets take you to different places. Those places can take you to new heights. The symbol of how life works is a beautiful message within Hayao Miyazaki’s latest feature about a teenage Mahito who is haunted by his mother’s death. Relocation to a new city gives him a new chance to re-adjust to experiences in life that he has not felt in a long time. Adjustment leads to noticing the strange parallels between the way he lives now and the way he used to live. A strange new world with the influences it needs to get even stranger. He is the one that they have all been waiting for. ‘The Boy and the Heron’ follows a young boy trying to make sense of where his life is leading him.

ONLY YESTERDAY (1991)

Dreams can tell you a lot about yourself. They can give you the momentum that you feel like you have been lacking. It is the singular push that a person often needs to inflict their drive towards the choice that they need to make. Sitting in contemplation, pondering on what you could have done differently then instead of what you could be doing now. Life is a long road of reflection, it relishes in your regret. The ability to go back and forth inside of different points in your life to make sense of where you find yourself as an adult is the type of message that the film finds its strength in telling because it holds a strong resemblance to how we live as people. Directed by Isao Takahata who takes the reins in delivering the power of a story about a woman who wonders if she has been living true to her dreams. It takes going on a trip with yourself to realize what you have been missing out on. ‘Only Yesterday’ showcases the lyrical switches between the past and the present for a woman who contemplates the arc of her life.

TALES FROM EARTHSEA (2006)

Nature is a character in its own right. When nature deteriorates, so does everything else around it. It is a lifeline for people. Nature can be all that we know our environment to be. People begin to act strange when they are cut off from the one thing that keeps them above the surface. Written and directed by Goro Miyazaki, the film highlights the story of humans and dragons that find their worlds starting to intersect when they are meant to be isolated. When two worlds collide, it can be a recipe for catastrophe but it can also be a moment for monumental experience that can change the course of someone’s life. Propelling you into the life that you are supposed to live. ‘Tales from Earthsea’ breathes into the story of an island trying to survive the difficulties of evolving nature.

Studio Ghibli has cemented a legacy in animation. They have built an empire in what childlike wonder can consist of. Young dreams that run wild because they were given the chance to. Hayao Miyazaki has established himself as a legendary voice within the genre of animation. A director with a goal in mind as he interweaves his narrative direction with the signature animated style that has stemmed from the studio. Two artistic pioneers coming together to build art that will be unforgettable. Art that can stand the test of time. To be remembered as a pivotal point in a child’s core memory of their life. To be known at all is to be known as a fond thought in cinematic quality. Our most formulated thoughts are our first experiences in life. Our best thoughts are steeped in cinema.

It is like waking up from a long nightmare when a switch just flips off in your head. You start to move differently when you shed the ability to care about how other people perceive you. You stopped caring a long time ago. You stopped putting other people’s needs above yours. You started putting yourself first, opening the door towards a long journey of self reflection. We find that the journeys we often put off are the most necessary ones in our lives. The cinematic feeling of a character’s awakening within their life is one that is full of good satisfaction as we watch from the other side. Satisfied from the feeling that it is not an isolated experience, it is a universal one. Films that have mastered the act of the awakening inside of a person. The camera documented it all. The actors inhabited it all. The screens solidified it. We embraced it.

MAGNOLIA (1999)

A catastrophe can put the trajectory of your life into perspective. Anything can bring your life to a halt. A singular moment that leads to a mental collapse. You start to wonder if it is time to inflict some kind of change into the way that you have been living. What will it take? To finally have an appreciation for your life? The little moments matter, they mount up to the small routines that give sustenance. Things may feel like they will never pick up, the pressure might feel relentless in the way that it falls down on your shoulders but it is a reminder to keep living. For a group of characters that find their stories intertwining with each other, they will find their journeys to be vigorous. The rain pouring down on their skin is a signal for their survival. It’s a sign that they can still feel something. ‘Magnolia’ is the Paul Thomas Anderson classic that showcases the values of what a life truly means.

THE MASTER (2012)

When you find yourself in the pit of despair, the slight resemblance of family can be the light at the end of the tunnel. That light is a form of guidance. That guidance will give you a new sense of purpose as you live through the outskirts of the society that you find yourself residing in. It is all about perspective. It is about what matters in the grand scheme of it all. Are you truly living in the way that you are meant to be? Grasp the full scale of the destruction that is inflicted from the choices that are made to adapt to the unlivable lifestyle that you have made for yourself. The sooner a person can come to terms with the gravity of how they live, the quicker they will realize the speed of the motion needed to fix their errors. Time is always on your side. You just need to find it. ‘The Master’ follows a World War II veteran who is unable to deal with the post-war society, embarking on a path to find solace in his religion.

ALTERED STATES (1980)

We are all floating around in a mental abyss. Subjected to the unknown circumstances that seem to make up our existence. Science is remarkable in its ability to contrast life in all of its complexities. Lost within the parameters of his consciousness, a doctor explores the darkest depths of the human mind. The exploration of the altered states within the human condition. What exists within our mental frame? How are we built to withstand so much? It is the guarantee of a manufactured life, put up with the mental hell and ask for nothing in return. Built to withstand yet made to feel like your emotions are not allowed to exist outside of a factory setting. They don’t want you to break the system. The system is made to be broken. ‘Altered States’ dissects the story of a research scientist as he experiments on the altered states of human consciousness using hallucinogenic drugs which lead him into an uncontrollable state.

PERSONA (1966)

It can be hard to knock down someone’s wall when it has been shielding them for a long time. Walls can be protection. Walls can be someone’s coping mechanism to hide themselves away from their trauma. For an actress who has all the reason in the world to keep her persona under a lock, it can be hard to find the key that you mentally threw away. You have lost so much track of time. You have forgotten the origins of where sentimental values once stood. Assertiveness has withered away. Paranoia sits in its place. A life spent wondering who can be trusted with the details of your life. Who was once an open book finds themselves to be sealed shut. You decide who gets to know your ending, on your terms. ‘Persona’ navigates the intimate setting where a nurse is given the responsibility of taking care of a stage actress who is speech-impaired, finding it difficult to communicate with her as they develop a strange relationship with each other.

THE DEVIL (1972)

It takes one singular person to save you from a life that can be wasted with ill choices that do not represent the ways in which your time should be spent in your life. Most strangers want nothing in return but some of them want one thing. They want to make a single choice on your behalf, a choice that they know is out of your hands as it comes into theirs. Occupying the space that you cannot occupy. Some will steal for you. Some will kill for you. Some will morally corrupt you. These choices form a path towards destruction, setting the tone of what your life is now set up to be from making the decisions that formed the road that you found yourself walking down. Is it within us all to sin? Some people handle their moral compass better than others who get swept up in the lust of their own minds. Influence is one hell of a drug. ‘The Devil’ follows a young man saved from imprisonment by a stranger who leads him down a tumultuous journey.

TRAIN DREAMS (2025)

Ordinary days can lead to extraordinary lives. The way in which we live is riddled with challenges. Change can be a challenge. Uprooting all that you know, everything that you have built and come to appreciate about this place feels hollow when the love isn't there anymore to give it the meaning that it once had in your heart. You haven’t felt that kind of love in a long time. All that you feel is loss. The loss of love. The loss of life. It shapes your mind into a person that you do not recognize at all. That person who lost their passion for the world. The journey of reclaiming a life that once felt bright before the dullness took the light. Getting back to a time where hope was revered in your soul. It used to mean something, it still has meaning in the places that you often don’t look inside of. Lessons unveil themselves in every place that you look. ‘Train Dreams’ lifts the lid on the story of a logger living his life in a quiet reserve.

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962)

High society invents an elitist level of high standards. People who deem themselves as living above the lower class that they look down as animals while viewing themselves inside of a higher status. The higher you are, the less human you become. Sacrificing your morality for the sake of societal class, selling your soul at the cost of your own heart. Departing into an elevator that will bring you back down to the ground. Forced to live in the skin of the people that you have looked down upon. Nothing is beneath us. Life is worth living when you retain the spirit that you were never meant to sell. Facades deteriorate into truths. It is the undoing of high society. ‘‘The Exterminating Angel’ navigates the aftermath of a lavish dinner party as guests find that they are unable to depart.

THE TERMINAL (2004)

Life is always waiting. You will find yourself stranded in a place that feels unlivable because by most accounts, it is. A bustling airport that never sleeps. You will find yourself wandering around the terminals, gazing into the high ceilings that miss the warmth that you would attribute your home to contain. You will ask yourself the questions that seem to lack the answers that need to be searched for. This is the test for survival. Life has built him to this moment, a tourist lost in a place that feels daunting. A place that was not meant to inhabit him for this long. The temporary structure does not have the foundation to become a permanent structure. A man out of his depth, making the unrealistic situations somehow work in his favor. Homes are built in fascinating ways. ‘The Terminal’ is the Steven Spielberg tale narrowing in on a stranded European tourist in JFK airport.

ICHI THE KILLER (2001)

The strange things that we inflict on ourselves in the name of love could be studied. Human beings are strange. Morally corrupted minds set on the idea of painful love. It is not a romance, it is not a love story, it is a game to see who can top each other’s intolerance for torment. Some are driven by desire while others are driven by lustful greed. Starting as the hunters, blurring the lines that cannot be crossed until they find themselves becoming the hunted. It is a game for hunger. Bloodshed that has its own routine, shedding the blood of the people that it chooses to draw from. There is no intolerance for pain. There is no intolerance for suffering. You are not built to tolerate the feelings that you cannot run away from. ‘Ichi the Killer’ follows a yakuza enforcer searching for his missing boss while coming into contact with a repressed killer who inflicts his dream levels of pain.

APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

All missions have an end to them. Some missions are not meant to exist. Some are not meant to extend out of their parameters. A man left to question the choices being made within his circumstances that are out of his depth as he peddles back and forth around the danger. The danger of finding people who don’t want to be found. The price of your life on the weight of your shoulders. The crushing weight of expectation which could be the thing that kills you before someone else does. It is a game of what can get to you first. Spending so much time chasing the people which will only lead down a spiral that benefits no one. It is a search with no reward attached. The only thing to be found is the loss of control within yourself. You know it is time to regain control. You know it is the end. ‘Apocalypse Now’ focuses on the journey of an army captain who is sent to locate a mysterious man who embarked on illegal guerrilla missions within the enemy territory.

Cinema taps into an awakening that feels indescribable. How do you explain a feeling that has been sitting dormant in the crevices of your mind for so long that it can take just a moment for a switch inside of your brain to finally flip. You relate to the characters that go through their slow understanding of everything that they have missed out on throughout the course of their experiences with life. Knowing your worth opens up the chance to finally explore it. Stories that explore the out-pour of an awakening inside of a character influence the awakenings inside of us. Influential in their ability to shift the conversation between fiction and reality. Films that blur the lines are often the ones delivering the lessons that we should pay attention to. What exists within the character, exists within us.

Our identities are the most vital aspect of our personalities. They make or break our experiences with the world. The way that we find ourselves in the world is important to how we grow as people. Forever adapting, forever shifting towards who we would like to be and how we would like to be perceived. The friendships that we make in the process of us sourcing in our hearts what it would mean to live through life with unfiltered eyes. From a cinematic standpoint, films are at their most powerful when they are documenting the characters that move through their own coming of age. Characters that discover what it meant to be themselves. What it meant to them to be understood by their own peers. Making friends with the people who push you to be authentically yourself. They help you to find a place in this world. You find your own sense of meaning. You find an agency. There is an emotional power in how the film depicts the values of our existence. The films that display the need in acting for yourself. The art of a young mind finding their footing in the world.

E.T. (1982)

Far away from home, detached from the place that you have always had secure comfort in. Isolated in a place that doesn’t resemble any of the familiarity that you have come to know in your existence. Nothing in this place has any of the warmth that you have attributed towards your home. All alone in your journey towards getting back to the place that lives in your heart. Determined to get back to what you know your home to be. What blooms is an unlikely friendship with a young boy who knows about the importance of finding security in your life as he navigates his own coming of age. The importance of having to keep a new friend hidden while the forces around you are hunting with their ulterior motives. It is up to his newfound friends to keep him safe. It is up to his friends to get him home. ‘E.T.’ is the Steven Spielberg classic that details an alien being’s journey to get back home.

PATHER PANCHALI (1955)

You dream of a better life for yourself because you know that it could be in your perimeter. You know that it is possible when you have seen it come to fruition for other people. Your dreams are the vehicle for hope and your hope is the vehicle for change in your life. Imagine what you could have, removing yourself out of the circumstances in life that has tied you under the surface as you begin to chase a parameter of success while your struggling family lives with the isolation that has filled your place. Young minds that make the best with what they have. Children that enjoy their small pleasures because a little moment of happiness makes up for the longer moments of difficulty. The juxtaposition of the children still savoring their happiness while the parents have to sacrifice theirs. Feeling the switch in your head turn off as you find yourself in the face of universal struggle and you realize that misery is soaking up the space where your happiness once thrived. ‘Pather Panchali’ focuses on the impoverished family striving for a better life.

STAND BY ME (1986)

We often let our curiosity get the better of us. We are fascinated by the concept of disappearance, looking for what cannot be found. Caught up in searching for people who were once like you, lived similarly to you and found themselves in fatal circumstances. A group of boys that find out about the body of another boy which lay near the rural area of their homes leads them towards wanting to see the body. That choice leads them to defining the complexities of their friendships as they find out about their differing lifestyles and the differences in their lives at home. A simple journey rooted in macabre curiosity ends up strengthening their bonds. An adventure that evolves into a defining event in their lives. ‘Stand by Me’ is Rob Reiner’s vision of the classic Stephen King tale that tells the story of a group of boys who have their lives changed on one fateful day of discovery.

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988)

There will be times in your life where you will find yourself needing to be closer to your family as they move through their moments of struggle. You will find yourself looking for ways to feel more present in your varying circumstances of life. You discover the abundance of nature. You find yourself feeling moved by the trees that are swept by the wind. The leaves that move to their own rhythm. There is peace in the forest as you enter into a space that feels intimate in its protection. Nothing can hurt you in the embrace of nature. It heals something inside of you. The glistening sun is your guide to an inner love that will set you free. Nature can nurture the heart. It can awaken your mind. It can mend your soul. ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ is the Studio Ghibli classic that tells the tale of two sisters finding themselves within the healing nature of the forest that is placed near their home.

ALMOST FAMOUS (2000)

Music is our universal language. It taps into how we feel emotionally. It inspires us to dream. It inspires us to live. That dream can lead you to an opportunity that feels impossible to say no to. A young boy’s love for music allows him to come through with his developing identity within music culture. Finding exposure in the space that he could see himself inhabiting at some point in his life. Sitting in his overwhelming sense that it almost feels too good to be his reality. It feels too real. He starts to wonder how much of it he can enjoy before he begins to feel like there is more to his life than chasing the highs of fame. At some point, you will find yourself falling into the grasp of an industry that has no intention of letting you go. ‘Almost Famous’ follows a young boy’s love for music while he finds himself navigating an opportunity to interview a rising band in the industry.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (2009)

We have a wild spirit in all of us. It clamors to get out and unveil itself to be our guidance at any given moment, what we believe to be our greater purpose. We let our imaginations run wild in the effort of using it as a coping mechanism to shield ourselves from what we are running from. A young boy who uses his imagination to seek out escapism, yearning for the chance to live outside of his own realm. There is a whole world out there, where the large, magical and talking beasts sit and wait for his arrival as unsuspecting curiosity takes over. Exploring a world that has so much to show you, the secret hideaways that reveal the hard truths about the world that you are scared of facing. You are shielding yourself from the fact that you may never be ready for the claws that life presents. You have to grasp it. Unleashing the wild will set you free. ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ depicts a boy’s mind as he imagines himself inside of a faraway place.

THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998)

What if your entire life was on air for everyone in the world to see and you weren’t even aware of it? Unaware that every moment in your life has been scripted to perfection. The people that feel as though they are actors starring in the story of your life while you wonder if you have seen these people before. If you have ever known them outside of what they want you to know. Do you know who you are? Have you ever known your own right to your independence outside of a manufactured life? Things are often too good to be true when they are crafted in a perfect setting, captured with a perfected lens. Once you realize your entire existence has been crafted on a lie, it opens up the opportunity to seek the truth. ‘The Truman Show’ documents a man’s journey as he realizes his entire life, as he knows it, has been a lie.

MOONRISE KINGDOM (2012)

Young love can bloom in meticulous ways. Falling in love with the promise that no one could ever come in between you. Soulmates making a pact as they run off into the forest that awaits their company. Love that is not allowed to exist in peace as they are actively hunted down. Humans disrupt the nature that sits in calm reserve. What comes back around is a brewing storm that holds no mercy for the people that find themselves at the force of it. Finding yourself in the eye of natural trouble that will chase you down until there is nowhere left to turn except facing what you know is coming for you. Love fully blooms in all of its potential when there is no one around to disrupt it. ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ is the Wes Anderson spectacle detailing the story of young lovers who yearn for their own space where their love can grow.

CORALINE (2009)

Sometimes, you wish for change in your life. You wish for your home life to be different, wanting to feel seen by the people who are meant to love you with unconditional force. Your contemplation on what the days of your life should be leads you towards wandering as you look for a spark in a town that is void of it. A young girl’s curiosity leads her down boring hallways where a door unlike the other doors lies inside of the wall, maintaining its oddly square shape. It is small enough for a young Coraline to wander further, only to find that at the end of that door lies an exact replica of her home with an added uniqueness to it. A overwhelmingly perfected version of her family who harbor unusual tendencies, an obsession for buttons and a sinister heart. You often get more than what you wish for. Your wishes are always altered. ‘Coraline’ navigates the journey of the titular character as she realizes she has to make a sacrifice in order to stay inside of her ideal life.

IT (2017)

At some point in your life, you will meet a group of people who will vastly change the trajectory of it. They will change what you perceive life to be. They will influence it. A group of newfound friends that come together as a collective as they deal with their heightened troubles. They don’t realize that it is all interconnected to a town that influences a murderous spirit. An entity that feeds off of their trauma to benefit itself. The very town that they find themselves residing in. People who are forever bonded by their trauma, guided in their need to instinctively heal. Blooming friendships that showcase the ability to find family in people who have been desperately yearning for it. Strengthening their bonds as they take down the force that tries to take them out in the process. You learn a lot about yourself when you go through the faces of struggle. You find your resilience. You find your strength. You will find your people. ‘It’ is the story that follows a group of friends who must defeat the horrifying presence that terrorizes their town.

These films tap into the specialty of growing up. To have a strong mind, to know where you want to go and have hope that life is going to bring you down that right path. Life can be unwinding in what it puts us through. Experiences that feel unclear because we haven’t found the clarity that we need to clear our minds and put ourselves at ease. Everything is a test. Those tests have meaning. The will to live becomes stronger because you decided to push through it. That is the rising strength of a powerful identity.

From the voices carving out their original stories on a canvas, the bold new voices and the visionary storytellers, everyone has a story that is waiting to be moved from the page and setting the scene for visual creation. We are looking for films that travel beyond borders and connect cultures. We are nothing without culture. We are everything with a lens to document it all.

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The act of feeling like you have had enough. You are at your limit with the world. Pushed to the brink, pushed to the deepest depths that society can drag you to. Locked inside of your limited space, a house that feels like a prison. Mentally stuck inside of the cage in your head, searching for a way out of it. You wonder what it will take for things to get better, when it will get to the point where you start feeling like a functional human being. Hoping that you can start feeling like yourself again. Cinema has tapped into the showcase of the tired woman who takes her rage into her own hands. The women who had enough of feeling like they were being tested for how much they could put up with. Working themselves tirelessly and wondering what they have to show for it. At the point of snapping at the world when it refuses to give them a break. A mirror can feel like it’s cracking if you’re looking at it for long enough because you are breaking on the inside. Female rage, on a cinematic level, channels a euphoric sense of unleashing the anger that persists inside of them. The anger that will set someone free because they finally felt seen for just a moment after holding it all in.

CARRIE (1976)

A girl walking through her life knowing that she isn’t like the other girls. She possesses something that makes everything and everyone standstill, a telekinetic mind with the power to change everything in her life. The world could be at her feet if she knew how to live with the power that sits inside of her mind. There would be peace in her life if people tried to understand her a little more. What should make her feel powerful, creates a cage inside of her. Her home feels like a prison. She feels caged within a society that will never treat her like an equal. She won’t feel like a normal girl when people refuse to treat her as such. What should be a special night at prom turns into a humiliation ritual for a girl who has hit her boiling point. A tide finally turns and she unleashes what she has been holding inside of her all this time. Blood soaked terror. ‘Carrie’ is the classic channeling the titular character’s yearning for normalcy within her overwhelming life.

AUDITION (1999)

The perfect wife doesn’t exist, the pitch perfect life that people unrealistically build inside of their heads doesn’t exist. They are stereotypical mechanisms created by men, for men to feel better about their inflicting misery. A widowed man persistent on moving on, taking the advice of an old friend to hold auditions in the effort of finding the next love of his life. The room shifts when a woman with a fascinating aura walks in with the look to kill. Her eyes locked in with a singular goal in mind. A choice that sets in motion. A plan that sets the course. Locking the door and bringing him down the path of making his life a living hell, one foot at a time. ‘Audition’ is a revenge-fueled film telling the story of a widowed man staging auditions to find his ideal love. What he finds is a quiet woman who isn’t everything that she seems to be.

THELMA & LOUISE (1991)

A road trip that takes a turn for the worst as two women attempt to take a moment to themselves. What they find is a new chance at escapism. The ability to reinvent their lives. Escaping the dreariness that plagues them and swapping it for a chance at peace yet their choices that they believe are right for them end up being the choices that lead them down a road of regret. Suddenly, a calming trip away turns into a trip on the run. People turned into fugitives who have found themselves having to run from their growing problems. What they find is an adrenaline rush and a craving for danger. They found their strength in life. Reinventing their identities. Reinventing their resilience. ‘Thelma & Louise’ is the thrilling, gripping film of two women finding a new life on the road, a trip that ends in unforeseen circumstances but allows them to rediscover the strength that lies inside of them.

READY OR NOT (2019)

In-laws can be a real nightmare in your life. They can push you to your limit. They can get on your last nerve. These are the lessons for survival, a litmus test to see how much a person can handle when they feel the weight pressed against their shoulders. All it takes is a game of hide and seek to let the motives spill out and reveal that you are being developed as a pawn in a machine. The simple task of a woman having to survive through the night is intertwined with difficulty when her in-laws are seeking to hunt her down in the process, in the name of keeping their system running smoothly. Some systems need to be changed. Some systems need to be destroyed. Some families are rotted to their core. ‘Ready or Not’ follows a young bride’s wedding night as it turns into her living nightmare when she is forced into a horrifying game of hide and seek with sinister motives attached.

TÁR (2022)

The strive for perfection can slowly eat you alive if you continue letting it. A woman on her own path to success. A woman in her own league above others. The great ones believe in their ability to walk above the rest. They believe in their higher purpose in their life. Lydia Tár’s personal life crumbles around her as she pushes the limits of her musical achievements. What defines the measures of being the greatest in your field? It is not based on work ethic on its own. It is about timing. Having luck on the side hands you the ability of having a better chance at creating the career that you have dreamed of since the moment that you could breathe it in. Everything that attributes to a great career, bringing her to a greater surface. A woman on the verge of a career defining symphony as her past catches up to her. Past choices that start to carve out the life that you are living in the present. All the choices that you make in your life can send you on a path of self destruction. It’s a level of uncomfortable control that can detonate inside of your head at any moment. ‘Tár’ follows a celebrated conductor who has to face her past mistakes that start to echo throughout her life.

ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968)

Life can take you to new heights. Some of those experiences are a part of the natural cycle of living. A young couple who are in love and looking to start a family in an environment that seems fine on the surface but there is a strangeness in its core. Something sinister is lying underneath the foundational surface. More than a subtle movement, it is a feeling that is unshakable. The feeling that they shouldn’t be there. The invisible forces that wrap themselves around you, do not want you here but they won’t let you leave either. You are stuck in a limbo, shaped like a house that feels like all hell has moved into it. You are not in control anymore. You never have been in control. ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ is a cinematic highlight on a young couple moving into an infamous New York apartment known for its frightening activity.

PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997)

The pressure of the world resting on your shoulders, the expectation that you could be the one who changes things. Making a difference for the sake of everything in life that depends on there still being a future to keep dreaming about. The gift of being special comes at the price of doubting yourself while being surrounded by people who are telling you everything that they think you want to hear just to keep you focused on your path towards destiny. A young warrior who is holding the world in the palm of their hands as they navigate the qualms attached to their quest for fate, protection and courage. Every warrior has to find themselves before they start their journey. Those journeys unlock the greatest potential. Journeys that can heal something inside of you. ‘Princess Mononoke’ follows a young warrior’s journey to heal the world as they find the courage to heal themselves in the process.

RAW (2016)

There is a hunger that attaches itself to how you navigate the world around you. Only knowing one experience for the majority of your life because it has been all you have ever known as your safe space. Comfort often sets the scene for staying within your limits and never expanding because you fear losing your sense of safety. A vegetarian feeling out of her element because she has found herself in a space that will not adjust to her needs. Losing what is familiar to her while getting lost in a seductive world. A place that wants a young woman to tap into what she is afraid of activating inside of her head. They want to corrupt her. Parasites that lay dormant until you’re flicking the switch that is giving them the unwanted access to your brain. They initiate the swarm that leads to a loss of your own control. A visceral hunger takes over. ‘Raw’ analyzes a young vegetarian navigating veterinary school as her principals become strained over time.

I, TONYA (2017)

Being the best to ever do it comes at the price of losing what it means to be level headed. Losing the ability to be calm. Losing your need to feel assertive as you get lost inside of your own mind. Not interested in fitting in because you don’t need to fit in, you do not see success in playing it safe. Pushing the elements of what you can do in order to rise to the top of your success. On top of the Olympic ranks, feeling as though you are on top of the world. That kind of fame comes at a cost when you find yourself falling to the depths that you didn’t believe would be possible to fall from and crash into. Success that turns into disgrace. Once at the top, finding yourself at the bottom. Looking at the towering mountain that now feels taller than it was before and you wonder if you have it in you to climb it again. ‘I, Tonya’ is the story of a revered figure skater who finds the future of her career in question when a slew of events unfold at a devastating rate.

DEATH BECOMES HER (1992)

What is the cost of wanting to find the perfect version of yourself? Obsessed with fixing the imperfections, molding ourselves into an image that doesn’t feel soulful, it doesn’t have the heart because there is no warmth to be found in an isolated image of yourself. Fixated on your need to get ahead of someone that you assume is in a better league when they are finding themselves sitting in the similar pattern. They plot on your downfall in the hope that it could make them feel better when it is known that temporary feelings do not last. All it does is set the precedent for a future that doesn’t feel like it could be hopeful for people who have no concept of what hope is. Two women who are infinitely jealous of each other, going back and forth about who is better as they find themselves messing with a potion that promises beautiful immortality. A great sales pitch with a catch added onto it. It comes at the cost of your soul. ‘Death Becomes Her’ navigates the genre bending story of two women who are at their wits with each other as they fight over the one man who is responsible for their inner turmoil.

There is an empowerment attached to witnessing female rage on screen. It feels personal because it is. We relate to the mental crashing out of women who cannot deal with their situations for any longer. There are strong parallels between fiction and reality because they are interchangeable from each other. We notice the similarities. We feel the connection. We understand the feelings of the characters when they go through their point of no return. We have been in that place. Raging against the system. The visceral anger that rises from your body and seeps into the person that is in the closest proximity to you. Lashing out on the objects around you because you are in the mood of breaking what you can get your hands on. The best films are the type that have their foot on the pulse. Connecting the dots between the rage within the character and the rage that lives inside of you.

The classic period of film that defined artistic expression. The defining focus of what went into the creation of the film staples in the thriller genre. Simple backdrops that set the scene, lighting that would be remembered as a pivotal showcase towards visually highlighting the faces aligned to the famous names of yesterday. Stories that are simple on the surface but strong to their core. Solidified as a financial lifeline to an industry that felt safe falling back into its arms. There is a level of safeness in crafting what they know is a bestseller. Film noir served within the golden era of Hollywood where it knew no limits. They knew what worked. They knew how to create a statement through the atmosphere. A century defining genre propelled as a cinematic force to be reckoned with. Serving as the launching pad for creatives to see if there was sustenance in what they had to say with their vision. More than a mere aesthetic, establishing itself as an important vehicle to deliver the message of what it meant to struggle. What it meant to survive. Looking criminality in the eyes and dissecting the human condition. Film noir existed in a pivotal time of film where an audience was looking for escapism and the cinema became a vital place to seek comfort in.

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950)

A long forgotten actress shrouded in mystery, clueless in a lost world as she moves through with sadness in her heart yet living with the belief that she could be on the cusp of a resurgence. A confidence that is created by a large scale of imagination as she spends her days in hibernation, rarely letting people into her orbit. A recluse who is afraid of letting people get too close to her because it only ends in heartbreak. Do we set our own hearts up for failure? So focused on getting back to a past variation of ourselves that doesn’t exist anymore because we haven’t lived in that way for a long time. Too caught up in the past, confused in the present and distraught about the future. A silent star who couldn’t make the transition and found herself fading into irrelevancy. A true Hollywood story. ‘Sunset Boulevard’ is a tenacious cinematic story focusing on a hack screenwriter looking to write a screenplay for an elusive silent star.

VERTIGO (1958)

Anyone can get caught up in a whirlpool of their own choices. Tension can terrorize your mind in a magnitude of ways. Lost in your own way, spiraling into the strange circumstances of the world. An investigator who is kept up by the fascination of the human mind. They are engulfed by the depths of how people operate. Swimming in the mess of their choices in order to find the cohesiveness that lies in the clues that float above the surface. Human beings are complicated souls looking for a sense of direction. Searching for any kind of guidance. Trying to locate their sense of belonging. An investigation that leads to a connection opens up to a dangerous road of obsession. All roads lead to different variations of love that masquerades itself as lust. ‘Vertigo’ is the head spinning tale following a retired San Francisco detective who suffers from acrophobia, investigating the strange activities of an old friend’s wife.

REAR WINDOW (1954)

A perfect crime mapped out to perfection will still have its flaws circulating around the edges. A set up that still has the potential for everything to go wrong. Someone in the wrong place, at the wrong time will send a level of panic to the observers waiting in the shadows. What is the perfect crime? What goes into assembling the motions that lead to terror? There is no existence in criminal perfection, they borrow time in the hope of it all working out for them but they fail to realize that borrowed time has a way of running out before they reach the door to the next stage. Your choices are catching up to you. Planning everything into oblivion only pushes a person into a corner. Sooner or later, they will run out of last minute tricks that could bail them out of their impending graves that wait for them. It’s a one way ticket to succumbing under the pressure. ‘Rear Window’ is the Hitchcock thriller laser focused on a photographer who spies on his neighbors, convinced that he has become a witness to murder.

STRAY DOG (1949)

Bad days can have a habit of getting worse for the people who feel the relentless force in their life. What can go wrong, will go wrong for a young detective who is just trying to get through the day. A thief’s singular choice in stealing from him sends the detective on a downward spiral to find him and right the wrong in the motion of obsession. Navigating the sweltering streets of Tokyo for the stray man who led himself down the path of crime. Two distinctive stories that start to blur together as we realize that people are capable of doing anything once the desperation hits. We don’t know the true colors of a human being until they show us the full extent of what they can do. A life that shifts in rotation to pull back the layers, revealing the similar qualities of two individuals who are at their limits with each other. ‘Stray Dog’ navigates the suspense of an obsessive detective looking for the man that stole from him.

TOKYO TWILIGHT (1957)

A long lost parent walking back into a person’s life has the ability to stir up several emotions inside of you. Mentally scanning all of the emotional stages of happiness, confusion when questioning where they have been all of this time, feeling the anger rise through your body like a serpent, the sadness that arrives into your mind when you think about all of the moments that they have missed out on and the milestones that have passed by through the years. You can only form new experiences with the hope that they will still be present to experience them. Calmness slips in and allows you to accept how your life looks in the face of difficulty. Our experiences shape our lives. It shapes who we become as people. There is value in heartbreak as it reshapes your heart. ‘Tokyo Twilight’ tells the story of two sisters who find out about the existence of their long lost mother.

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)

Criminality works as a system within the underbelly of a city that reaps the benefits from it. Operating as a chain of events that transpire over the course of time to develop a catalyst for terror. They know the stakes. They know the risks. They believe that their self-importance ranks above the safety of others. Hive minds would prefer to corrupt the people around them than to believe that they could make meaningful choices in their environment, choices that could inflict a greater sense of worth. People struggle with their need to feel important so they end up making an example out of themselves. Intent that leads to carnage. They are the veterans in their own downfall. ‘The Asphalt Jungle’ follows a known burglar and a crooked lawyer gathering a group of criminals to pull off a big jewel heist.

REBECCA (1940)

A woman having to live in the shadows of another woman that she cannot compete with unveils a conversation in how high standards can be detrimental to a relationship as it hangs over your head before you have the chance to reach the door and enter the room. A prior lover that looms around your husband’s heart sets the course for a marriage that never had a chance to bloom because he never gave himself the space to grieve. Coming to terms with the traumatic circumstances allows her the space to come to the understanding that she deserves better. Applying her warmth to the coldness that waits for the chance to suffocate her at every waking moment. Dreams are the surviving remnant of our escapism. They keep us alive. ‘Rebecca’ is Hitchcock’s noir thriller on the story of a young woman marrying a fascinating widower only to discover that she must live in the shadow of his former wife, Rebecca.

DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954)

Is it love waiting around the corner or is it a plan set in motion to destroy everything in its wake? A woman becoming vulnerable to the person that she believed she could trust yet people have funny ways of unveiling their true motives in wanting to be close to you. A man who is packaged to be everything that she has been waiting for in life feels too good to be true, which is often the case. An orchestrated plan to back her into the corner. A plan with sinister motives. Plans do not always reach their fruition, some of them are doomed from the start. Strategists never plan on their target turning the tables back onto them. She comes to realize that he had been waiting for her all along. ‘Dial M for Murder’ is the cinematic thriller following a woman trying to make sense of her complicated life as her husband hatches a plan to murder her and inherit a fortune while doing it.

SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943)

People are not who they seem to be. They hide the things that they don’t want you to know and they amplify their false sincerity. They present a perfect and eerily charming version of themselves that feels disconnected from who they really are. One slip of their true character allows the truth to spill out. The concept of family becomes difficult when it is layered with deception and intertwined with identities who are anything but loving. It contains a level of coldness that never goes away, instead the coldness sits still. It stays attached to the circuit. It gets bitter. Coldness parallels the resentment that grows over time. You grow resentful of the person that you thought you knew. ‘Shadow of a Doubt’ is the masterful mystery noir following a restless young woman trying to navigate the true intentions of her uncle.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)

Love can take many forms. Love can be dangerous, murderous and it can set your senses on fire. It can lead you down paths that you never knew were possible to go down. A woman bored in the normality of her life as she heads on a rampage catches the eye of an investigator closely following the trail that she leaves around as she moves through with seduction. Fraudulent lust that roams through the air, fishing for the notice of anyone that would look long enough to let themselves be distracted while someone goes in for the kill. Dissatisfaction can destroy a person. Suspicion can kill a person. ‘Double Indemnity’ is the fraudulent love-struck visionary tale of an insurance representative being seduced by a dissatisfied housewife into a scheme of insurance fraud and murder which arouses the suspicion of his colleague.

Film noir existed within a time where people needed escapism. Living through the great depression, cinema showed itself to be a venue where an audience could assemble and relax for a while. It allowed them to forget about their troubles in their lives. They had the space to smile, laugh and feel the emotions that they hadn’t felt for a long time. The chance to smile when life gave them so many reasons not to. It was used as a tool to bring people together as they watched the golden stars of yesterday figuring out their fictional dilemmas with a hint of flashing lights and dramatic melodrama. What goes into building a genre? It is not solely about creation on its own, it is about curating a standard. A genre that will be remembered for its relevance. A genre that will stand the test of time.

From the voices carving out their original stories, the bold new voices and the visionary storytellers, everyone has a story that is waiting to be moved from the page and setting the scene for visual creation. We are looking for films that travel beyond borders and connect cultures. We are nothing without culture. We are everything with a lens to document it all.

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Influence is a powerful tool within a movement. It has the power to sustain a filmmaker’s voice and it has the endurance to motivate voices who want to take their originality into their own hands. The strongest element of all is the ability to create waves of film-making within the industry. A movement creates courage on a level that didn’t exist before. It started with a person getting a sense that they could utilize their minds to be inventive in such a way, only when they could see the people ahead of them doing what they have been reluctant to do for such a long period of time. It creates a backbone of support. A new level of unity. That is the backbone of the industry.

The Japanese New Wave came to existence in the 50s, 60s and 70s when Japanese filmmakers grew tired of their confinements dealt with by traditional cinematic creation and started to explore the themes of realism, sexuality, struggle and hardship. They realized that there was a powerful identity in navigating outside of the cages in life. The type of discovery that lies inside of the camera. More than a story, bigger than a statement. It was a spiritual awakening, The films were an inciting incident for an industry that would be revolutionized because of them.

CRAZED FRUIT (1956)

Love can bring out a side of yourself that you never knew existed. Fighting for the chance to feel seen by the person that you have decided will be your next big love. Suddenly, you find yourself doing things that you would never do in normal circumstances yet love can be severe to the brain. Do people notice the grand gestures taken to please them or are they distracted by their own sense of the world? A clouded vision that never clears at the right time. It can still give a person insight on how to move around in their environment, figuring out what their next move in the name of love should be. Too focused on edging out brotherly competition and not enough time being spent on developing their individual identities. Running around while disrupting the peace within the space and attempting to win the girl in the efforts of love. A coming of age blistering on the backdrop of a Japanese summer. ‘Crazed Fruit’ navigates the story of two brothers fighting for the love of a girl.

CHILDREN OF HIROSHIMA (1952)

For the people of Hiroshima, the landing devastation of the atomic bomb inflicted an inconceivable level of heartbreak. An instant tragedy placed on the shoulders of civilians who were forced to sit in the carnage. Forced to deal with the aftermath of a situation that they shouldn’t have been living in. Their struggles of trying to exist in the world were suddenly amplified as they wondered why life would deal them with the levels of inhumane severity. The toughest people are the ones who can make it through the other side of their hellish circumstances and create their voices from it. They will persevere. They will not be silent. They will be heard. ‘Children of Hiroshima’ documents the destruction and the devastation caused by the atomic bomb, using a fictional story-line to portray the struggle of the ordinary Japanese people dealing with the aftermath of their trauma.

THE BLUE SKY MAIDEN (1957)

A whole world shatters in seconds when you realize that your family haven’t been who you have believed them to be. You begin to realize that you don’t know who you are either. Stripping away a sophisticated life in order to learn the identity of who you truly are can be a trajectory that we all need to go on in order to make sense of how we live. What brings a person to a standstill of questioning everything that they have experienced? It can be a simple awakening. Connecting yourself to a feeling that has been absent in your life. The feeling of knowing what it is like to be loved by people who understand you. The feeling of knowing how to find your true sense of what it means to be alive. The weight that lifts off once you understand the true essence of family. It’s about knowing who to trust. 'The Blue Sky Maiden’ analyzes the showcase of what a familial identity means for a girl coming up in the world.

KISSES (1957)

Sometimes, the moment that you meet a person matters. You never knew that you needed a new perspective to give you a reinstalled level of faith in the world. A new love that felt like it had the ability to change your world and shift your journey towards a new path. To change your perspective on what love could be. A fateful day for a woman visiting her father in prison leading her to a like-minded stranger fueled by the same purpose in their life. Instant connections lead to an understanding that there will be someone out there who grasps your wavelength because they are on a similar mental level to you. All you have to do is look. ‘Kisses’ navigates the blooming story of love between two strangers who meet while visiting their fathers in prison. They take a gamble in their newfound love.

GIANTS AND TOYS (1958)

We live in a competitive society that is fueled by capitalism, an industry that is never sick of recycling its ways of capitalizing on the general public who cannot seem to grasp that they are on the receiving end of a puppet string. Some will make their attempts at breaking through the system while being aware of the chances of having very little to show for their efforts. We are all walking through the doors of a corporate controlled environment where they expect to be able to think for us instead of allowing us to think for ourselves. Advertising executives climb over each other with rabidness just so they can be the first to introduce an idea before someone else does. A group of people running in circles, at some point, they are going to get dizzy before they ever get to a place of feeling satisfied. Companies would sell themselves into the ground if they believed it would make a profit. ‘Giants and Toys’ follows Nishi, an advertising executive for a caramel company who are about to sell their next product in an industry full of fierce competition that leads to a fierce sense of believing that you are the best at what you do.

ENDLESS DESIRE (1958)

Burying a secret means being aware of the stakes when it comes back up again. Shoving objects into the ground when we know these things never stay hidden for a reason. They will always find a way to come out of the surface because of a human’s desire to have anything that they believe is theirs. They think they can take what they want without acknowledging what it means to truly keep something buried. It’s an understanding that when you bury something away, you are locking the past down with it. Opening it back up means subjecting yourself to the trouble that comes alongside it. It means opening the severely imperfect relationships around you up to being sacrificial lambs, leading you to closing yourself into a box that you cannot move out of. Curiosity is a real killer. ‘Endless Desire’ follows a group of people digging around a basement for things that should stay beneath the surface.

THE NAKED ISLAND (1960)

Worked to the bone and had nothing to show for it. Slowly withering away against your life’s work that barely resembles any sign of life at all. You look for any kind of perspective in the environment that raised you. A life spent in working towards what you once believed was where you were meant to be but all that you find at the end of a sunset is a mirror reflecting back at you, leading you to sourcing where your self value truly lies in the horizon. How much can we endure before we decide that we need to live authentically for ourselves? Push past the machine that grinds you to a halt and you will find that there is a life that is worth living because you made it on your own terms. ‘The Naked Island’ sources the life in the story of a family who struggle every day to irrigate their crops.

KILLERS ON PARADE (1961)

It takes one single nerve to be hit for a person to decide that they would want to make a hostile decision that alters everything in its course. Taking the law into their own hands when they have decided they want to be judge, jury and executioner which merges into a vengeful path tied together by loose ends that are bound to come undone at a certain point in time. Going down that road becomes treacherous when you realize that there is nothing to gain from revenge except a temporary satisfaction that lasts less than what it took to build up to it. People get fixated on taking back their ownership but they lose sight of what it is that they owned in the first place. Parading around in a motionless state of mind. ‘Killers on Parade’ is an enigmatic, cinematic tale of a vengeful contractor hiring a series of young killers to target a woman muckraker.

PROFOUND DESIRES OF THE GODS (1968)

Desire is not a one way street, it contains a magnitude of paths that lead a person into seeking out the deeds that they want to partake in. The choices that bring a person into carving out the rest of their life. Desire carries a level of deception along with it. We plant deceit in our minds by not being honest with ourselves. We betray our own hearts. We corrupt our own minds. We are at the fault of our own wrongdoing. The very minds that are incapable of tracing the blame back to their choices when they take it upon themselves to invade a space that was never theirs to invade. Human beings who tow the line of their own fragility. They plant the seeds of toxicity that spreads like wildfire. ‘Profound Desires of the Gods’ tackles the human condition, encapsulating the story of an engineer arriving on a tropical island to drill a well and power a sugar mill while infiltrating the lifestyle of its natives.

The Japanese New Wave fundamentally changed the industry. It was about shifting the focus to the inherent problems in the business and allowing the filmmakers to approach their frustrations through a creative standpoint. Doing what is the natural thing for them to do. They are naturally adaptable in their focus while taking the narrative of a story, developing a visual identity and presenting a project that encompasses their creative integrity. Auteurs that paved the way for being known as the risk takers, knowing the chances of how those risks can pay off in the long run. Changing the narrative, inspiring the generations of creatives to listen to their intuitive visions and influencing the blending of the genres to introduce what we recognize in today’s lens as sub genres. It had the industry on its knees and it made them listen. The full effect of nurturing a voice can reflect into the world of an industry that needed change. A cinematic viewpoint into a world bursting with its realism. Cinema is created by the change makers. Cinema is for the people.

Breaking the traditional standards and resetting them by embracing the handheld approach that allows the stories within the films to feel intimate, up close and personal. Using the re-developed film techniques through experimentation and allowing it to be steeped in its bold realism, through its direction, editing, writing, performances, visual style and the story driven narratives. The high caliber filmmakers in the forms of Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Eohmer, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol and Agnes Varda, who took the industry into their own hands to create films that knew the fullest extent of their identities. Films that reinvented itself through each passage of time. Films that showcased a need for vocal independence. A technical approach that was new in a sea of techniques that are old. Standing out from the rest to be remembered as the movement that reinvented the industry.

Based on its poetic realism and its need for riveting identities, The New Wave emerged in the 1950s as a notable rejection towards the traditional approach to film-making. The new form of expression that reinvented the methods and paved the way for the future generations of filmmakers that would be inspired by the need to believe in their own originality and to stand out from the rest. It is the most influential movement in the history of cinema.

LE TROU (1960)

Four inmates gambling with their time and a plan that is set in stone while knowing so much can go wrong. Disruptions come from all around. They can disrupt a motion and leave you wondering about the instability that occurs in the space that you find yourself occupying. Are plans ever stable to begin with? There is a belief in them to distract ourselves from the fact that things can change in an instant. Disruption can take the form of anything and anyone. A newcomer that comes into their orbit and they find themselves taking a risk, allowing a stranger to absorb their plan to get out of the system that keeps them locked in. Some risks do not pay off. ‘Le Trou’ follows the story of four inmates who have been hatching a plan to dig out of jail when another prisoner is moved into their cell and it leads to them questioning everything.

THE 400 BLOWS (1959)

For a young Parisian boy like Antoine, life is a cycle of difficult events that repeat over and over again. Wondering when there will be time to breathe in between the moments of hardship that exist to continually wreck his life. Everything that feels as though it is closing in around you and you begin to wonder if things will get better. Is this it? Life’s greatest test is pushing us to the edge just to see if we have it in us to take another step. Observing as those steps lead to leaps into situations that you cannot walk back out of. Stuck in misery, surrounded by inconsideracy. The only way out is to dream for a better life and hope that your plan blooms successfully. Schemes will only go so far until they bring you right back around to the trouble you are running from. ‘The 400 Blows’ is a spectacular focus on the life of a young boy faced with growing troubles as he strives to make a better life for himself.

EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960)

The heart sinks with misery when it becomes riddled with guilt. A family tragedy that leads to a daughter’s disfigurement opens up a conversation that is uncomfortable to sit in but we must confront ourselves with the way we perceive our inner concepts of beauty. One singular act leads to a lifetime of consequences for the father who is behind the controls of it. A man obsessed with finding the perfect face for a mistake that was caused at his own peril. A destroyed life that sets the course for more destruction. Choices that lead to an individual spiraling out of control as the mess beneath his feet continues to rise above the surface. You are drowning in your own decisions while the madness sets in, steering the wheel. The faces that find themselves in an inhumane void without an identity. Shrouded in mystery. ‘Eyes Without a Face’ is a horror film with a heart of mystery, following a doctor who is shrouded in guilt for an accident that was his own doing.

VIVRE SA VIE (1962)

A woman trying to find herself in the midst of confusion and lost within her struggling identity leads her down a path of exploitation. The feelings of disenchantment are familiar to those who feel that their lives are not taking off in the directions that are most desirable to them. Feeling deflated as they are consistently hit with problems that continue to amount, persist and feel relentless in pushing the dreamers into the ground. A woman’s desire to be a successful actress is killed by the crux of poverty and a collapsing marriage that leads her to contemplating what it could take to start feeling happy about her life again. Unfulfilled moments in life can lead you down the path of sourcing what truly matters to you. It’s about finding your voice. The most powerful voice in the world is a woman’s authenticity within herself. ‘Vivre sa vie’ focuses on a woman’s downhill path to societal-fueled exploitation.

MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S (1969)

Running into old friends can open up to new experiences that connect you to new people who have the chance to change your entire world. Conversations create connections. Connections lead to doors that haven’t been opened yet. Communication comes with complications as the characters dance around their romantic afflictions for each other. Redefining what love could be. Allowing it to bloom to its full potential. Accepting that you are not always right about who you expect to stay in your life and who will walk into it. The right people are the ones who bring out the biggest potential. ‘My Night at Maud’s’ is the great showcase of a film about a man running into an old friend who introduces a woman with the ability to change his life.

CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 (1962)

Paris is its own character. The city that watches people navigate the streets as it eloquently sits through the looming light of the sun which evidently fades throughout the day. A beautiful portrait of a singer who moves adrift in the city while we watch her await for results that could shift her mind in seconds. Watching the emotions change in each passing minute parallels the real life worries of people who have to handle their own struggles in each passing day. The backdrop of the 1960s fills the visual frame to showcase a woman’s life as the minutes feel like hours. A spirited capsule of vivid realism and a melodramatic tone that blend together to showcase the surrealism of life. It’s a chronicle of time. ‘Cléo from 5 to 7’ is Agnés Varda’s sharp film encapsulating the city during the period of the 60s, following the story of a singer within their real life portrait of time.

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959)

All it takes is a conversation that comes from the heart. Emotions that emerge from the incredible depths within your body and soul. The deep conversation that emerges between a Japanese architect and a French actress results in emotionally deep love and profound connection. Pivotal conversations that give space for remembering their memories that have lived in their heads for an extensive period of time. The kind of memories that we push to the back of our minds in the effort of hoping that we never have to acknowledge them again. At some point, we have to discuss our memories to their raw extent in order to enact real conversations that feel authentic as we battle between being closed off or being open to the person in front of our eyes that is allowing themselves to open up to us. The captured lens of lovers turned friends detailing their life experiences in a conversation that lasts for hours. There are immeasurable depths to the heart. ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ details the couple who intertwine their stories about the past while pondering the devastation of the city.

BREATHLESS (1960)

Love can be a whirlwind that sweeps you off your feet. It can leave you wondering where it has been for all of your life as you navigate the confusing cycle of what it means to love somebody. It starts with loving yourself which comes with difficult feelings of wondering if you will ever feel mature enough to invest in someone else romantically. It takes one person running from something in their life to come along and develop a love that feels outspoken. That kind of love comes with a level of persuasion as you begin to think about if it is truly love at all. Stopping in the heat of the moment to ponder about what it is that they are running from. A life on the run isn’t a life at all but rather something that masks itself as false security to distract you from realizing that you are a temporary muse. ‘Breathless’ is Godard’s honest analysis on a small town thief’s need to sweep a woman off her feet in the effort of getting out.

CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (1974)

There is a vitality in dreaming. It keeps us looking towards the future while we think about what our lives could consist of if the ideal version of our visions paid off. The people that we could encounter who meet with the standard set in our heads. The places that we wish we could be in. Every single scenario exists within Julie’s head as she plays the ideal version of her life repeatedly in her mind. It doesn’t take long before she meets an enigmatic Céline and the opportunities for an adventure unveil itself. Heroines that get lost within a time warp. Sometimes, we need the space to lose ourselves a little in order to fully find ourselves again. ‘Céline and Julie Go Boating’ declares the story of a day-dreaming librarian and a charismatic magician going on a fascinating adventure together.

THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964)

Every romance begins with a story and every tragedy ends with one. Two people who are destined to be in love but life works within tragic circumstances, often cruel in its unwavering turmoil and destruction. The streets of Cherbourg observe as a girl sitting in a difficult choice has to decide what her next move in her life should be. Love-struck with her soulmate while stuck in the motion during his absence with a sudden acceptance letter for a courted marriage with a diamond merchant where there is no passion, only control in a loveless environment. Sadness is the rain that spills from the air as she lives with the difficult choice that takes an uncertain amount of time. The mind ponders but the heart wants what it wants. Soulmates will always find their way back to each other in whatever form it may take. At the end of a drought, the sun is waiting to beam its light back on her life. ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’ is a notable film for all of the lovers in the world as it highlights a girl’s difficult choice between her love and her financial comfort.

More than just a movement, The New Wave revolutionized the industry. It set the standard for future film-making and it set the methods for future creatives to draw back from, allowing them to thrive within the space of their originality. Vigorous identities were formed and it took the face of filmmakers being able to fight for their visions. It created a chance for them to go back and forth with their ideas, with the belief that they could produce them independently, have the final say and be successful in that decision. That is the power of a movement. That is the power of creation. That is the power of the voices in cinema.

Setting the scene, creating the visual focus and incorporating the foundational backdrops allows the camera to be a character within the film. The visual is our perspective, we are the lens as we are witnessing the story for the first time. It allows us to have a new understanding and a re-developed point of view. The camera knows it because it is also watching the story and the strangers that it has never met before inhabiting a space that it is stepping into as an outsider. The closer it gets to the people, the more it allows us to open up within our own spaces and allow the familiarity to set in. Cinematography is a whole genre in its own right, vitalizing the visual landscape of stories. Giving them a new sense of meaning. The true innovation of cinema as it stares into the field of focus, adding to the field of visual visionaries.

DUNE (2021)

Everything in our lives begins with a journey. A discovery towards the life that you believe you know everything about until it gradually turns around to unveil new sides of itself. Are we fully aligned with ourselves? Are we aware of what we could achieve? Minds that are capable of greatness, equipped with the possibility of changing the world. The power that is attached to an intuitive mind knows no limits, all it creates is consequences that continue to loom around and be a reminder of what is to come. Someone on the cusp of revolutionizing the world as they know it. Paul Atreides, a brilliant, gifted and intelligent young man born into a destiny that continues to be beyond his understanding, walks through his life trying to make sense of his visions that are a collection of fragmented pieces. Impossible to fully piece together without letting the pain of the full prophecy encompass your mind. A path that leads him to places that he must go to, to ensure the safety of his family. It takes a reckoning force to stop the malevolent voices. It will begin. ‘Dune’ is the cinematic showcase of a young man conquering his psychic fears to survive.

RESURRECTION (2025)

Can we take back what we have lost? Is it gone forever? Our dreams are the vital quality within our lives. Dreams keep us pushing towards an ideal version of life that feels worthwhile. Dreams keep us floating along the river, keeping our heads upright towards a future that feels full of promise. Dreams keep us alive. Without the ability to dream, life would feel like an empty void where it lacks the spirit that hope once stood in. The prospect of immortality comes at the cost of losing the ability to truly live with all of the emotions and qualities that make the experiences with life long-lasting. Surrendering those abilities leads to an understanding that no one will truly live again. A vicious circle that will repeat itself for the people who have to endure it. Losing your dreams means losing a part of yourself that you cannot get back. ‘Resurrection’ is a transcendent film focusing on the pain and the beauty of an intoxicating world.

BLUE VELVET (1986)

Life is a mystery, we can never quite understand everything that it develops into. Vague in the unknown, enticing the curious to uncover the truth within their world that masks itself under the shroud of deception. A world that is confusing to navigate while feeling rewarding once the method to cracking the surface has been fully realized. It takes a singular discovery to set your senses on fire. That discovery in question just happens to be a severed ear which leads this young man to finding out the truth when he eventually finds himself working on an investigation related to a jazz singer who is incredibly mysterious to the eye. All the evidence eventually leads you to a scene that you have to face. What he finds is a situation that leads him to feeling very over his head. It really is a strange world. ‘Blue Velvet’ follows a man’s investigation towards a group of psychopaths that have kidnapped a singer’s child.

THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)

Being a long journey away from home can lead to unwinding paths of lessons that a young girl never expected to learn so early in life but sometimes a girl needs to look outward to figure out what she is missing in her life. Making friends along the way that are struggling within their own trials and tribulations. All it takes is a trip on the yellow brick road to get a large perspective, onward to the wizard that can grant everything that they desire within their hearts. Complex on the surface yet difficult to navigate and deceitful in its unraveling layers. What comes off as wonderful can end up being steeped in wickedness. There truly is no place like home. ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is the wonderful technicolor triumph dissecting Dorothy’s life as she finds herself making friends with an unlikely group of people in an effort to get home again.

PARIS, TEXAS (1984)

Unknown destinations often parallel unknown state of minds. Memories that feel distant and out of place because we struggle to remember our reasoning for wanting to be in the places that bear no resemblance to us. Do they even exist? Is it a figment of our imagination to help us cope with the fact that we feel out of place with ourselves? Getting to a point where we feel emotionally intent with where we are in life. Inherent struggles are a testament to the strength that lies within our hearts. The perseverance that attaches itself to our minds. Through it all, we will come to learn there is a place for the dreamers. A place for the people mending themselves through heartbreak. There is a place to pick up the pieces and put them back together. ‘Paris, Texas’ visually analyzes a man’s journey as he wanders out of the desert with little recollection of who he is.

TITANE (2021)

Humanity is fascinating, complicated and difficult to navigate on an instinctive level. The way in which human beings operate when met with varying levels of confusion and estrangement from the people who have it convinced within their minds that you were once somebody that they knew and loved dearly yet have no idea that you are at the scene of the misery that they are living in. They do not find themselves relating with the people who have been out of touch with themselves for an extensive period of time. It creates a longing that cannot be fulfilled as the lens focuses on a woman going down a rabbit hole that is intertwined with darkness and deep levels of toxicity. Becoming everything that she did not want to become as she finds herself down a murderous path. Rising from the trauma and built with the metal that holds her together, she is not who people believe her to be yet it is easier to put on the pretense than give into the truth that has the potential to break someone’s heart. We put up so many walls to the point that we get confused on which ones to knock down. ‘Titane’ is the surreal film telling the story of a woman with a metal plate in her head since childhood going on a bizarre journey full of pretense, lies and disassociation.

POLTERGEIST (1982)

A singular force doesn’t need to be seen to create an impact. The wind in the trees that lingers with a force that could knock anyone off of their feet. The toys under the bed that have the ability to move to places that they have never moved to before as you find yourself looking at them a little too long. The static in the TV that vibrates the entire room. It’s more than a feeling on the back of your neck that sends the chills down your body, it is a possessive force that locks around its inhabitants long before they can realize that they are within the hold of a reckoning atmosphere. A paranormal activity that is strong enough to turn a suburban home into one that feels anything but homely. Opening a door to another world with unknown forces, is a door that is impossible to close. Once you let them in, it is too late to force them out of your orbit. They are here. They want you. ‘Poltergeist’ centers on a family navigating an evil force within their home.

IT FOLLOWS (2014)

We believe in monsters being a physical thing in our minds. It keeps us at peace to know we can avoid looking in a certain direction. It keeps our consciousness at ease to know it might be in our imagination. Sometimes our own heads can be our worst nightmare. Not all entities are seen and heard. The invisibility can wreck havoc on the fragility of a person’s mind when they are dealing with an entity that has them surrounded at a level that feels like it is closing in, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere where it wants to drive you into a corner. A suffocation from a force that is cold and unforgiving. An entity that doesn’t think. An entity that doesn’t feel. An entity that does not care. Relentless in driving you to the brink of insanity. It never gives up until you do. ‘It Follows’ is the defining horror following a woman who is haunted by an invisible force after a sexual encounter.

CURE (1997)

Obsession can be the thing that derails your entire existence within your field of experience. Searching for the scattered clues of a criminal act that keeps you awake at night. Letting your mind wander towards the questions that naturally exist within your realm of awareness. What are human beings truly capable of? How do they get to a place where they act out the darkest thoughts that exist within their heads? There is no clear answer to figuring out the methods that bring a person to the edge of believing that torment is the only answer. Detectives that keep themselves alert at all times to look for the answers to their questions they know may never be solvable. It’s a repetitive cycle of terror. It’s enough to make anyone spiral. ‘Cure’ is the film that navigates a detective that is spiraling out of control when a wave of murders within bizarre circumstances starts to sweep the streets of Tokyo.

EYES WIDE SHUT (1999)

When we shut our eyes off to the world, are we subconsciously aware of the places our mind can bring us too? Once off encounters or meaningless interactions that we never gave second thought to, are suddenly at the forefront of our minds when we drift off to sleep. It leads us to wondering if there is more to it. It leads us towards questioning everything in our lives. Are we truly happy about the places that we end up in? Is there ever regret that lurks around the corner waiting for the chance to center itself into our minds? Some people put up a false sense of happiness to mask the fact that they crave a severe need for attention. Seeking out their own pleasure which leads to a cycle of obsession, lust, delusion and regret once they realize they are in over their own heads. The need for sexual desire creates a strong threshold, you don’t realize it is dragging you under until it is too late to climb back out. ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ is Kubrick’s magnum opus about a doctor becoming obsessed with having a sexual encounter when his wife admits that she’s having fantasies about a man she met.

These films understand the essence of what their visual component stands for. The cinematic instrument of the camera does not merely exist on its own, it is about what you do with it on a creative level. Creating a result that can stand on its own and age beautifully within the testament of time. The creativity that feels good in your heart as you nurture the instincts that breathe life into a film. Visuals that break down barriers and hold space for the conversations that are meant to be had. A picture can say a thousand words, the camera is the conversation starter and the film reel is the archival for those conversations. Holding the space for a cinematic medium that wouldn’t exist without a camera’s need to document it all.