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Yes, dinner is the main event here. Or at least, six desperate guests spend the entire runtime trying to get one served in one of my all-time favorite films: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie by the one and only Luis Buñuel.

Are you hungry? Maybe you should eat something before watching one of the greatest films ever made. It will either make you starve right along with the characters, or leave you starving for more of Buñuel’s films. Or both — but believe me, you’ll love the brilliance of this metaphoric hunger.

I’ll contribute a few snacks without spoiling your appetite, as usual. Here we go: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Enjoy the meal!

1. ^{Stills from The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, IMDb}

2. ^{Audio Snippets from the film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.}

Okay, deep breath. If my sudden outburst startled you, let’s take a breath and touch grass together. I’m (probably) not talking about you, though you might relate to this more than you care to admit. Let’s walk through cinema etiquette together, share some stories, and figure this out.

I’ll start.

Allow me to set the scene. It’s 2026, Germany. The theater lobby is a buzzing hive. Different ages, backgrounds, incomes — everyone is back. Can you believe it? It’s as if the pandemic and the streaming wars were just a bad dream, and we’re back to what we’ve been doing for over a century: admiring the magic of the big screen that lightens up our imagination. A massive shout-out to Cineville for keeping arthouse cinema shining across Europe (and making me extra proud that the idea was born in the Netherlands).

The atmosphere inside the theater lobby is electric. It’s loud, it’s chatty, and people are queuing for popcorn and soda like they’ve been stranded in a desert all day. I love that lobby buzz. But the second the doors close and lights go down? That love affair ends.

Everyone has become so “chill” about going to the movies again that Netflix is nervously scrolling through its contacts trying to find someone to chill with. It seems nobody wants to watch movies at home anymore.

And yet… I sometimes wish certain people would stay home on their couches.

Mainly because I have a strong feeling a lot of moviegoers fundamentally misunderstood the meaning of the word “chill” during the lockdown years and the years after.

I’m trying not to judge; the first time I was asked to “Netflix and chill,” I misunderstood it, too. As a cinephile, I felt insulted. So, I offended the offender and suggested we watch Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. A great choice to ensure that guy would never feel “chill” around me again.

You’re right, I am not a chill person. I admit it. And I am an extra not-chill person at the movies.

Once the lights dim, I don’t talk, and I don’t want to hear anyone else talk. And yes, I see the irony after romanticizing the popcorn queue five minutes ago, but inside the dark hall? Loud crinkling of popcorn bags turns from lobby nostalgia into rhythmic torture. The glow of a smartwatch (even just its ambient screen reflection) can be pure agony.

For me? The cinema is a rare sanctuary where my attention is fully committed to one thing: the film. I turn on flight mode on my phone. I go ghost. I am nowhere to be found, and I am not rushing. I am quiet. It’s my chance to live analog again, away from phone notifications, calls, and endless doomscrolling. I am not chill, but I am at peace. I am in the moment.

How many of those pure offline moments do we even have left?

Not many. We are addicted to being connected, addicted to social media. Substack is social media, too. Even if we like to dress it up as something more intellectual. The reality is, if I don’t Restack this piece in my Notes, I’m shouting into a void. So I will restack it again and again. If you found me through Notes, thank you for being here. I appreciate you. My non-strategic social media strategy actually worked.

Now, back to the flight-mode cinema experience that usually lets me fly away.

Unless…

Unless it’s a rejected takeoff. Instead of getting off the ground, I am getting angry right on the tarmac. And anger is the absolute wrong fuel for an airplane engine. It only takes one button to push me over the edge.

Somehow, people seem to have forgotten how to behave as soon as the lights go dark. Or maybe they never learned? These days, audiences talk loudly, commentate like they’re hosting a live stream, cringe at anything, and check their smartwatches and phones, blinding everyone around them with a digital halo that is light-years away from indicating any holiness. Some even put their feet up on the headrest and treat the theater like their personal living room. Not long ago, I think I was watching Devil Wears Prada 2, someone’s sneakers actually entered my peripheral vision, hovering inches from my cheek like a jump scare in a film edited to give you the ultimate ick.

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Did we forget that a cinema chair isn’t your couch at home? Though, to be honest, would you really throw popcorn all over your own floor at home? If the answer is yes, I am genuinely judging you right now.

Granted, I am not the Cinema Police coming to arrest anyone who does it. Out of experience, whenever I do say something, I end up feeling like a Jehovah’s Witness knocking on a door to explain the gospel of silence to someone who already believes they are on the level of Saint Francis of Assisi.

So, I stopped intervening. Instead, I started holding the rage in, grinding my teeth so hard I could burst into tears from pain and run back to paying for Netflix. And on the rare occasion when I do politely say something after the credits roll, I’m met with: “Well, why didn’t you say something during the movie?”

Gaslighting is, in fact, the ultimate fuel to set my anger on fire. And having an engine fire mid-flight is not exactly a great condition for a constructive conversation.

So, let’s have a conversation here instead. What do we do? How do we bring basic human etiquette back to the movies? Does anyone have a real answer? Or a story to share? Because I’m running out of ideas.

It’s been some time since those shoes hovered right next to my face, and I am still vibrating with rage. That screening made my anger the main character. Sadly, there is no “flight mode” toggle for my emotions. The absence of cinema etiquette is killing me.

So, the anger made its way here — to my Substack.

Thank you for hearing me out. You clocked in while I clocked out.

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Photo credit: Library of Congress / Cinema Posters from the year 1912.

A fair warning before you dive in: this episode confronts severe clinical depression. If you don’t feel comfortable with this topic, feel free to skip this one. Please don’t forget to return for the next one — I will try to pick something we can laugh about together.

But if you choose to stay today, I have under ten minutes to convince you to watch Melancholia, directed by the brilliant and controversial Lars von Trier.

So, silence your phone, put your headphones on, step away from the performative expectations of daily life, and let’s explore the cosmic beauty of a world ending. I promise it’s a cinematic resurrection you won’t forget. Enjoy my melancholic voice!

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So as of today, I’m going to convince you to watch the bizarrely wonderful film Dogtooth / Κυνόδοντας, directed by the master of dystopian absurdity, Yorgos Lanthimos. Are you ready to be weirded out? Amazing!

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Before The Favourite or Poor Things made him a household name, Lanthimos shook the world with this film. It debuted back at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, took home the Un Certain Regard prize, and instantly put the Greek Weird Wave on the map.

The plot revolves around three siblings kept in absolute, lifelong isolation on a gated country estate. They have no idea the outside world exists. The performances by Christos Stergioglou as the authoritarian father and Angeliki Papoulia as the eldest daughter are so fiercely committed, it feels terrifyingly real.

But what really hits home for me is how Lanthimos plays with language. The parents control their children by literally redefining words. In their house, “sea” means a type of armchair, and “pussy” is a lamp. In the audio episode, I get a bit more into that, so get ready for some serious mind and tongue twisters.

As someone who loves foreign languages, this movie feels like a twisted parody of learning a new language — or suddenly understanding your mother tongue through a completely different lens. It’s a dark reminder that whoever controls your vocabulary controls your reality. It’s dead serious, utterly absurd, and a brilliant critique of how easily human minds can be conditioned. I might try to control yours, too. Just for 10 minutes.

So, put your phone on silent, drop your boundaries at the door, and let’s step inside the gates of the Dogtooth house. You will never look at an armchair the same way again.

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Audio sources:

1. Dogtooth Trailer

2. Cine-fils magazine - Yorgos Lanthimos on Family / YouTube

Today, I’m going to convince you to watch 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, directed by the master of raw realism, Cristian Mungiu.

This film means a lot to me. As someone who was born into a similar post-communist world, lived in an identical student dorm, and built up a lot of anger toward that oppressive reality, this story hits incredibly close to my own home — a home that was lost to a 30-year dictatorship. But the film doesn’t just show history; it drags you right into the suffocating atmosphere of Romania in 1987.

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Thinking that authoritarian regimes are a thing of the past, or that their horrors can’t replicate themselves today, is a dangerous perspective. To face the truth, you have to look at history not as a distant textbook chapter, but as a mirror to our present. In my opinion, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days gives us a front-row seat to exactly that.

The film tells a single, devastating story over the course of one day. We get to know two university students, Otilia and Găbița, as they navigate a predatory state where a back-alley abortion is the only option left. There are no fancy camera tricks or emotional music tracks here; silence takes the main stage and sings the saddest song you have ever heard.

Mungiu traps us in a world where a pack of black-market cigarettes or a bar of soap holds the exact same survival currency as a woman’s body. Join me as we look this uncomfortable masterpiece right in the eye, learn from its brutal honesty, and—most importantly—remember why human rights can never be taken for granted.

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Audio sources:

1. CBS Evening News - Husband blames Texas abortion law for wife`s death / Youtube

2. TVR - Discursul lui Ceausescu din 21 decembre 1989 / Youtube

3. Tom Sykes - 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days - Anamaria Marinca Interview / Youtube

4. Nosoulmovie - Christian Mungiu on Shaking the Camera / Youtube

5. 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days Trailer

That’s all right, given the doubts this film is raising. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been asked what I would do in that same situation, or if I would marry that person. That last one is not complicated, since I am never getting married again. Come after me if I do and slap me, okay? Another question I keep hearing is: What is the worst thing you have done in your life? I will tell you what — this one sent me into a spiral.

For a while, I sat with it quietly. Then, like a shark, I began circling the deepest corners of my soul — an abyss that felt like my own personal Mariana Trench. Deep, dark, unknown. But it’s all somehow an illusion. The pressure underwater is high; decompressing takes time. It’s a permanent gloom down there, making it hard to find the truth, to see what is real and what is not. And even if I wanted to share what I discovered about myself by searching for answers... I never would. We all know why, right? Well, if not, listen to me.

The one thing The Drama taught me — whether on purpose or not — in every unknown situation to pick up a mirror and look at myself closely. Trying to figure out who I am. That’s the first step. Then, perhaps, to carefully turn that mirror toward the next person and give it some time, until all the reflections and shadows build a form that the human eye can see and absorb without a magnifying lens. So if this revelation alters your understanding of that person, maybe it’s time to turn the mirror right back to yourself. And to try again to understand your own reflection.

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How can we understand others without understanding ourselves? How truthful are our projections? How real? Well, I’ve been asking myself these questions for a while, and you know what? I’m taking my time. And I think everyone else needs to, too, before we rush into judging others.

That’s why I think the story of The Drama — and the example of marriage — is a great mirror for any social interaction. It’s easy to understand and relate to, forcing us to pause for a moment and to lighten up the dark spots. We are more patient with a marriage, yet we rush into other situations as if there is nothing to be afraid of. But even the weirdest creatures from the deep sea look cute when illuminated (Anglerfish sort of does). Clarity shifts our narrow-minded points of view at the speed of light — scary things become common. And yet, we still find ourselves completely obsessed with measuring everyone else’s flaws while ignoring our own.

Okay, enough Friday night psychology. Let’s circle back to reality.

The truth is, I actually didn’t mean to write about Borgli’s film. Everyone here on Substack already did that a month or two ago — just enough time to understand something and forget it all over again. But it happened anyway. I found myself caught up in the drama without any real drama, simply because the question of “what would I do if my partner…” was raised by a friend the other day. Once again, I didn’t have an answer, but I did find a new perspective on the topic — one that comes with a film recommendation.

If, after watching The Drama, you are still losing sleep over what you would do if your partner revealed a horrible truth... I’ve got you covered. There is a film you might also like to watch. But only if you are not afraid of French New Wave black-and-white cinema.

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Hiroshima Mon Amour, a 1959 film by Alain Resnais.

This film is a love story — vivid, passionate, and deeply truthful. Though by modern standards, we probably wouldn’t call it a classic love story, it’s more of an intense encounter, a one-night stand, a summer romance without the summer, a love that lasts only until the sunrise tears them apart.

This sunrise takes place in Japan — the Land of the Rising Sun. An unnamed French woman (played by Emmanuelle Riva) and an unnamed Japanese man (played by Eiji Okada) meet. In the brief, fleeting moments they spend together, they find themselves revealing and reliving deep-hidden traumas from their pasts. She has never been able to trust anyone with her secrets before, not even her husband.

It is as if, together, this couple opens a portal to the past. Through it, she can finally find acceptance, understanding, and freedom from the unresolved emotions that have been eating her alive since the end of the Second World War. You can imagine the crushing weight of the secrets she carries. But as the morning light brightens the sky, the truth is no longer scary to reveal:

Lucky or unlucky for us, this film exists. But let’s not judge history as it stands; it cannot be changed anymore. Film is merely a mirror of our reality — one story out of millions. So when you watch Hiroshima Mon Amour, remember to observe yourself first, and this couple on screen second. You might find some answers for yourself, or you might get beautifully lost in the slow, poetic cinematography. One way or another, it is a monumental piece of post-war cinema, and it is well worth the visit exactly as it is. There is no drama, no hot tea to spill. Just a very real story to observe, feel, and learn from.

We live in a world that wants us to react instantly, to take sides, to post the verdict on the internet before anyone even asks for our opinion — the shit hits the fan, and everyone starts clapping. But some stories require us to decompress, to sit calmly in the deep water for a while, to think and observe until the first light hits to reveal the hidden corners. Like The Drama, Hiroshima Mon Amour is asking you to do exactly that.

Go watch it. Go offline. Stay silent. And if you find yourself spiraling into your own Mariana Trench afterward... don’t worry. I won’t ask you to share what you found.

Now you know why, right?

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*Quotes from Hiroshima Mon Amour

Today, I’m going to convince you to watch Night on Earth, directed by the poet of the night, Jim Jarmusch.

This film means a lot to me. As a traveler, an immigrant, and someone who can’t stand stereotypes, I find the way Jarmusch handles them fascinating. Stereotypes shape our points of view, whether we like it or not, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from each other.

Thinking that Paris is just dirty, that Finns only drink, or that New York is nothing but dangerous is just one narrow perspective. To change that, you have to visit these places not as a tourist, but as someone who truly wants to understand. In my opinion, Night on Earth gives us a front-row seat to exactly that.

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The film tells five stories through five short vignettes—25 minutes each. We get to know five taxi drivers and their realities in L.A., New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki. They all drive different roads, but like the eastern horizon, they are all moving toward the sunrise. Yet, just as humanity sometimes does, they are moving backwards in time... if you catch my drift.

In other words, by the time the sun is finally setting in L.A., it is already coming up in Helsinki. Join me as we navigate these local stereotypes, hopefully learn from them, and — if nothing else — simply enjoy the ride.

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Personally speaking, these are the films that move me, surprise me, and eventually... refuse to leave me. These are the stories I love so much I’m practically forced to share them. My hope is that you’ll watch them, too. And maybe fall in love just like I did.

I will keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Stay seated... here it comes.

Today I am going to convince you to watch… Mulholland Drive, by David Lynch.

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Every day I wake up and can’t sit still, so I move forward, powered by ambition, energy, life, anger to fight, bills to pay, and creativity. Without creativity, which brings it all together, it would have been impossible to wake up — or so I wishfully think from time to time.

But reality tells me, it’s not necessarily about me being able to write my witty thoughts down in a playful, bubbly way full of metaphors and ideas, or it is not about editing films or taking photos, so my ability to tell the story can be translated into any language we collectively don’t speak. By the end of the day, it’s more about me pushing that button “transfer money” over and over, every time it is required. But it rarely works the other way around. Creative work seems to be a wonderful outlet. Why can’t I find the transactional entrance to it?

Last year, I worked on a couple of films. Some of them were very low budget, which means for free, or for the love of cinema, if you want more poetic wording. I worked on the weekends, at Christmas, and in the evenings after my regular, also not very high-budgeted work in film. This week was different. I spent more than 16 hours in the hospital. Two hospitals, to be exact. Just waiting to be told I should rest and everything will be fine. “Are you stressed?” I could cry on the spot, just from hearing that word — an admission I can’t make to anyone but myself. I know that if I say it out loud, I will be dismissed. But stress does not make me cry anymore; it makes me angry. If my anger had paid off, I would have been rich by now. But instead, I go around and ask for medical help that I am being immediately asked to pay for. Which makes me work harder afterwards, so I can ask to be paid, so I can pay for that medical help before. That’s the rabbit hole. So I answered: “I am stressed to be here and now.”

How could I not be stressed? I was put in a hospital room that looked like a prison cell, where I sat on my own for six hours, voluntarily. No book with me — not that I could read through my headache — no internet, no connection at all, like it was a bunker. At some point, I thought they were trying to test my pain, or perhaps to give me a room for a massive thinking process, like a self-therapy. Once I started having a few signs of my own life coming back again, I remembered that I had a download of a three-hour making-of interview with Francis Ford Coppola on my phone. This is when his Apocalypse Now collided with mine. In that crucial, given moment of my helpless misery. And it actually started helping me. But maybe it was just a painkiller. Let’s not pay too much attention to that anymore. My headache madness is not the main character of this little piece of a truthful essay.

But Francis Ford Coppola is. He is ambitious, angry, and creative. On top of the fact that he knows how to transfer money, he also knows how to make it double. His Apocalypse made him go insane and broke, but he came out of there stronger and richer.

Francis Ford Coppola wanted to make a film about the Vietnam War, the first film right after the war ended. Working with a Hollywood studio meant boundaries; he wanted freedom. He wanted to go grand and powerful, sending the message without the limitations of a system that has too many voices. After his earlier success with The Godfather, it was clear his own voice was very strong and exact. If you heard his directions to the crew from the making-of, you would know what I mean. He knows exactly what he wants and nothing less than that. So that was one of the reasons Coppola decided to invest his own money into his new project — Apocalypse Now.

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Imagine the numbers: Marlon Brando alone asked for a million dollars upfront, plus another million for each additional week of filming. Coppola spent 238 days in the jungle. His team built the set from scratch with hundreds of people — twice. After Typhoon Olga destroyed the set completely, Coppola simply said something like, “The first one wasn’t even built the right way.”

When he ran short of money, he asked for support wherever he could; he put his house and his car up as collateral for a loan without regret. At least, that’s how it seems, because the easy way he talks about it says it all:

“I believe that filmmaking — as, probably, is everything — is a game you should play with all your cards, and all your dice, and whatever else you’ve got. So, each time I make a movie, I give it everything I have.”

The way he spoke about money and his work is impressive to me. He knew his value at the very moment he was taking the highest risks. He put everything on the map, knowing that even if he lost it all, he still made the film he wanted. And by tomorrow, he would just go and earn the money all over again.

If I were to live a single day in his head, I would go insane on the spot. Right now, I am just in the midst of making myself mad about my creative work and money — slowly. Coppola was stepping onto the set, driven mad by the jungle. Or was the jungle just a convenient trigger for the real madness of his ambition? Anyhow, his ambition was fluent in the language of profit, moving in transactional ways in both directions.

It’s inspiring because my own ambition also works as if on steroids. Non-stop, without breaks, and I know exactly what I want. And yet I don’t want to blame my gender, my immigrant origin, or the time I am living in for my financial misery. I don’t want to blame anyone or anything. But why do people tend to disrespect payment for creative work? Why am I agreeing to low-budget film projects just for the sake of making them happen — and for the sake of me happening within them? I know the answers, and yet I am still going for it, because of the ambition and energy I have in me. And I am building this crooked empire with my bare hands slowly. It is inside of me. But it is angry today.

It brings my grand headache to this bunker room in the hospital, where it felt like, the quiet white room was deliberately trying to wash out my chaotic state of mind for six hours. Trying to blend me in and resolve me into something I can’t ever be. But six was just another blank number with some empty space in the middle, resolving into higher numbers that I don’t like to face. Like the face of Marlon Brando, who would probably back then drop dead laughing about my “girl math.”

There I was, just hoping this situation is not going to turn into the nightmare of some kind of a cursed film production, like what happened to Laura Dern’s character in David Lynch’s Inland Empire. By the way, Inland Empire and Apocalypse Now should be put together in one room and studied, if it hasn’t been done before. Any volunteers?

Those two films together make a perfect, nearly six-hour screening. But before I do anything with that idea, I will try not to lose the sense of my own self. As long as my painkillers are staying low-dose, I think I will be fine. Or, as all the doctors I saw this week said: I should not be stressed. So I will try to get there by watching the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse about the making of Apocalypse Now. I’ve heard it’s amazing. And I really want to see how Coppola was filming his insane — in the most admirable way possible — body of work.

Because there is a lot to learn. From both, actually — Coppola and Lynch. In many ways. But that’s a story for another time, once my headache apocalypse is over and I’ve found my way out of this rabbit hole of bills that my whole low-budget film situation created. It’s a work in progress, I would say, with lots of positive things on my mind.

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That book happened to me years ago. I don’t remember its name, its size, or the color of the cover, but I still carry one of its theories: we are mostly right-handed because of women.

Not that women weren’t hunting at all, but when they had a baby, they were mainly foraging for berries and roots. Beautiful as it sounds to my ears — not being spoiled with crying newborns — I heard that a mother’s heartbeat helps calm babies to sleep. So back then, women held their child with the left hand, close to the heart, while collecting with the right. That’s a beautiful theory, isn’t it?

Many thousands of years have passed. Millions of steps forward and back. New habits developed and adapted, making us the humans we are now. But that practice of picking up things has stayed with us ever since. It doesn’t matter if we do it with our right hand or left; we are still scavenging, collecting, foraging, gleaning… I’ll leave an artistic space here for you to pick your own word and then carry on reading. Because I’ve been doing some collecting of my own, and I want to share those thoughts.

Please don’t be nit-picky about me taking you down this road of realism, but I’m going to talk about one of the greatest films of all time. If “Hollywood infected your brain, you wanted kissing in the rain1,” here is your last warning: switch to the Disney Channel and go hunting for your happy ending there. But if you’ve decided to stay here, let’s talk about The Gleaners and I, directed by Agnès Varda.

Welcome to the Varda Cult2 — a place where you will become a gleaner, whether you want to or not. Mainly because here, you will finally understand that you are already a gleaner. Everyone is. It’s in our DNA since 1.8 million years. If Homo erectus discovered foraging, Homo sapiens evolved it to perfection. We aren’t only gleaning potatoes and carrots; we are also collecting thoughts, knowledge, art, dreams, and scraps of memory.

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Agnès Varda was a master at it all. While holding her digital pocket camera in her right hand — keeping her point sharp and her heart open — she proves how diverse and layered our skills have become. By that stage in her successful career, it might have been the only thing she had left to prove. Her approach here is playful and carefree, taking the first steps into what we call vlogging these days. When The Gleaners and I came out in 2000, the three guys who founded YouTube were probably still brainstorming in a garage. There was no platform for her to upload to, so she went the “classical” way: she premiered at Cannes.

I am being a bit silly, yet I am serious. Agnès Varda was unwillingly but carefully holding her camera and mothering a generation of future vloggers — most of whom, I bet, have never even heard her name, let alone seen her films. That is sad. But we gathered here to fix it... or to fall asleep, since we should be perfectly calmed down by her cinematic heartbeat.

The Gleaners and I is not going to entertain your dopamine kick. It’s not going to please your desire for a well-adjusted frame, but it will frame your thoughts into a treasure chest of some kind. Agnès Varda is the architect, but you are the builder, the one who is still allowed to calibrate, regulate, and reshape your own frame of skills. As soon as you realise that this hard work is paying off, you will notice Varda’s elastic metaphors: how they circle back and how the substance is being recycled. Not only metaphorically, this time.

Here, foraging, or gleaning, is not only about potatoes and carrots. It’s about picking up the food that goes to waste after the harvest; it’s about the poor urban waste rummage; it’s about collecting when collective life gets reassembled by an individualistic way of living. Which, theoretically, brings us back to 1.8 million years ago. Or reminds me personally of something I want to share — if my lullaby isn’t turning into a Grimm story in your eyes just yet.

I was born in the Soviet Union, intense unite care stage of it. On the fringes of falling “greatness”, there was nothing left to be proud of, except the hope for a democratic future in the small, independent Republic where I was raised. But maybe there was one other thing: those dying flames of togetherness, belonging, and collectiveness. That last one wasn’t just forced by nature, but by a transitional economy and a habit of forcing people to be a little screw in a big machine. It cringed the most back then, but there was no such word to describe the feeling. Thank you, Gen Z, for introducing this wonderful word, so I can name that old world that you — oh, lucky you — never knew.

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In that world, September wasn’t just the start of autumn or the new school year. To be exact, it was a school-free beginning, because the “collectiveness” of it all was setting us free to go. Sounds like a dream, but we were forced into the fields to forage. All day. For free. In place of an education. Potatoes, carrots, beets, apples, flax. There, I was forced to see myself as a real gleaner.

It was 2002, and I could have compared myself to those three poor women from Jean-François Millet’s painting from 18573. That painting inspired Agnès Varda, but if I had seen it or her film back then, I would have gone mad. Not only was I less enthusiastic about collective free labor, but foraging for food was the most hated thing to do. September wasn’t the start of child labor; it was the peak of it. After spending all summer tending crops, September was supposed to be a break. That is how I started loving winter — a time when you could be overly focused, a bit lazy, and free to do whatever you please. It was during one of those winters that I started lecturing people on how cool it is to earn enough money digitally so that one can buy cucumbers in a supermarket.

Not being a gleaner was the goal, and I am glad I did not achieve it. I always thought I had succeeded, but after Varda’s film, I started rethinking my point of view. Mainly because I refuse to let things go to waste. Even my school experience should not be wasted, although I sometimes wish I had never had to do it. But then, I think it would have made me a different person, someone who doesn’t know how a homegrown, freshly picked, dusty cucumber smells and tastes.

Frankly, there’s nothing wrong with not knowing that. But once you know that watery-green taste of decent sweetness, you want to pass by the supermarket stand without stopping. Anyway, it’s not the kind of gleaning we were supposed to do. Or maybe it is. There is no clear answer — everyone finds their own way. I am just hoping it’s not moving backwards. As long as we have stories to collect, it’s all right for the next 1.8 million years.

Now, I want to shake your right hand and thank you for reading this. If you feel slightly overstimulated, feel free to stick around in this little Varda Cult — or what’s better called a collective — for a while. Maybe watch The Gleaners and I. It might calm you down. Or buy me a coffee, so I can energize my brain a little. There are plenty of options here.

Buy me a coffee =)

Not because her face always looked the same or her mouth was slightly open, but because I was simply jealous. She got the cute vampire, and I was getting sms delivered by pigeons. I also never got a flip phone, and Robert Pattinson never sneaked into my parents’ house in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Europe. What a surprise! He never watched me sleep. That sounds creepy, I know, but that is what vampires do. At least, that is what Twilight taught me right before my dreams shifted and I learned to separate Edward Cullen from Robert Pattinson.

By the time I had my first boyfriend, and my slow-tempered small town life sped up like a train wreck before the crash into Facebook and LiveJournal pages, I was over any kind of vampire bullshit. Somewhere in there, I stopped following where the saga went — who dated whom in real life, who was cheating on whom, and what, in general, was going on in cinemas on the other side of the ocean. Why would I care?

I didn’t, but Hollywood marketing was buzzing like tinnitus in my ears. I tried to cover them with my hands, but that sound comes from within; the volume of those persistent longitudinal waves isn’t easy to muffle. So, I changed the substance. I replaced them with a different kind of wave, the ones that do not need to travel far. French, Romanian, and many other “New Waves” of cinema. That felt very transverse.

I was not aware that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart had the same sense of artistic vibrations, moving on the same wavelength as me. It hit me years later, by accident, when I watched Good Time by the Safdie brothers.

By then, I had graduated in journalism, moved to Western Europe, got married, worked as an assistant editor on a first feature film, and was about to graduate one more time. Without me even being aware of it, my life was moving without a speed limit, like cars on a German Autobahn. I wasn’t using a seatbelt, even though everyone told me to; they rightfully blamed me when I finally crashed. Metaphorically speaking.

The sad remnants of me shifted to my iPad and deep-dived into binging, trying to process my losses the way it felt naturally easy to do. I was lost, and I was barely watching films on the big screen anymore. But on one very unhappy, rainy November day, I went to a local film festival in Cologne to see something I wasn’t really aware of. Robert’s face on the poster promised a “good time.” And I needed one.

I will never forget the state of my brain after that film — dizzy, yet bedazzled with a million ideas. My eyes went wide when Robert Pattinson, without any announcement, walked onto the stage for a Q&A. Well, it was sort of announced that there would be a “little surprise” after the screening. So, there he was: the little surprise. My favorite vampire himself, who in just 1 hour and 41 minutes had managed to shift my well-being up the hill, uplift my dreams, and, most importantly, change my entire perception of his talent.

From that moment on, I was going around the world yapping non-stop about how talented he is, how massive his career development has been since I first “met” him through Twilight. Little did I know. Way too little.

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I thought he was taking indie roles to run away from Edward Cullen. I thought Edward was chasing his shadow. But no one was chasing Robert’s shadow. It was Robert who was overshadowing the entire saga at once.

When it comes to Kristen Stewart, I have to admit: it was a false start. I watched her go in different directions, but back in my motorola-dreams-time, it never crossed my mind that she would one day be directing films or serving as the Jury President at Berlinale.

And yet, there she was… the youngest-ever Jury President at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, talking about cinema with such awareness, love, tenderness, and coolness. It changed the angle of my view. The table of my silliness turned. Suddenly, it was me standing there with my mouth slightly open, hanging on every single word she said. I started admiring her immensely.

Only two years passed, and she was showing her feature-length directorial debut The Chronology of Water in Cannes. It wasn’t a surprise. But once I saw the film, I fell in love with her artistry — her vision, the way of communicating her visual and spiritual world.

I am not going to beat around the bush for too long; I’ll tell you here and now: Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson are my favorite artists, hustlers, and of course, vampires.

In those old stories, humans transition into vampires to gain superpowers. Kristen and Robert learned to gain theirs by transitioning from Twilight into the versions of themselves we see today. With the insane amount of money they earned through the vampire saga, they could have retired at twenty-five. Instead, they chose to go high-speed and hustle, taking risky, twisted paths, defining their own limits, and testing our engines for the level of art we can handle. Maybe they could only do that because they were “set”1 by twenty-five? Either way, they took the risk.

I find their art wildly beautiful. Since 2017, I have known that I am in for any film where Robert acts. Now, I can’t wait for Kristen’s next film as a director. All they do fits perfectly on my wavelength. I move with them fearlessly — admiring their growth on the big screen, slowly but steadily learning from them, and hoping that one day our paths will cross professionally.

For now, I will flip my iPhone over to keep myself away from the Substack buzz overnight. I’ll keep dreaming big in the calm power of my sleepless ambition.

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I am open to a wide variety of distressing things on screen, but I am becoming rageful about the fact of how comfortably cinema has been shaping female bodies since the beginning of time — the screen lights up and decides where to put shade and what to lighten up. It’s not hard to guess who is earning the favour and ‘male gazing’ their way to the top.

You can see the top of the Hollywood hill from far away, yet if you try to get there without navigation, you can easily get lost for hours in the narrow streets of West Hollywood — admiring beautiful houses and ever-blossoming front porch landscapes. It’s beautiful, it’s for show, it takes your attention away. So, walking to the top turns into an ultramarathon where women are only allowed to walk in baby steps. Unless you x-ray the most vulnerable part of you and get the spotlight.

The spotlight of cinema feminism has been shining bright lately. Baby-steps are changing their frequency and quantity, trying to regulate their staccato rhythm of inconsistency. Some female voices are rising powerfully; others are taking a polite approach toward violence and abuse. Those are two words that should not be silenced or disappear into the shade of cinema light. Yet people are constantly trying to dim it.

I came across an interview with Maggie Gyllenhaal in The New York Times. She was talking about her latest film, The Bride!, and how Warner Bros. requested she pull back on the sexual violence in her final cut. She explained how studios screen-tested the film in malls, where people could give their opinions on unreleased versions.

The pushback from studios — powered by random people who see violence throughout the day but don’t want to see it on screen — is understandable, but not relatable from my point of view. When bruises and traumas do not get the spotlight on the screen but are selectively hidden in the shade, there will be no change in brutal reality. Whether we want it or not, film is shaping our reality. Mostly not in favor of the female perspective.

So here lies the truth, and violence is getting softened. And this is one of the reasons The Bride can’t shine in dimmed light of its powerful message. It makes me wonder, would it be the same pushback if a man were to consider making this film?

Possible, but impossible at the same time. Or irreversible in some cases. If you are a woman, you know this frightening and helpless feeling of walking home alone in the dark after a party. If you have to walk through the tunnel, you know there might be no escape.

Who taught me that? Gaspar Noé and his shocking-to-the-bones Irreversible. Since I watched this film for the first time, I live in fear of being raped on the way home. I always stay present and aware, trying to predict danger that might come from men. I did not enjoy the graphic violence of that dimension, but I learned the hard way to be aware. A disturbing film by a man who seems not to be a feminist at all, yet still hits the right spot of the male gaze.

If Gaspar Noé disturbed your comfort a little, let me give you a warm blanket and a cup of tea so we can move on together. Sorry, Baby by Eva Viktor is another example of how abuse can be portrayed on screen. It’s a soft approach with layers of painful margins, where the main character tries to process her open-wound trauma with kindness and vulnerable humor. The message stays clear and strong, but feels light and easy to approach — literally for anyone.

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I thought that at first, but then I remembered the test screening for The Bride! in the mall. I asked myself: would Sorry, Baby stay the same if it had those screenings before the final version? Or would the corners be sharpened for a change?

A cat and a sandwich might make abuse a tender topic. But it’s like a well-decorated facade of a house in West Hollywood. Beautiful from the outside, but can the neighbor see the bruises? Do they need to see them, or do we give each other some space for processing? It’s another perspective: the voice is dimmed, but powerful — if you care to see and listen.

But what if you don’t have any voice at all? Who speaks out for you? Who tells your story to this cruel, violent, male-dominated world?

I have an answer. Her name is Dea Kulumbegashvili, a young Georgian filmmaker who is unmuting the mute voice of someone who was abused. Her film April is quiet but rageful. It will calmly linger around your nervous system and hunt you down like a mountain lion without mercy. It’s hard to watch, impossible to rewatch; it’s built on risk, but that’s the real point of it all.

And the audience needs to trust the risk of discomfort once they’ve reached their seat and feel ready to submerge into the whole new world of female-powered cinema. Cinema that does not hide behind the skirt; it wears one.

I know that trust is being built slowly, and the trust for female voices is still walking in baby-steps for many, despite the fact that female directors themselves have for years been walking steadily on that hill of outspoken artistry. And it’s not the Hollywood hill they are summiting; they are tirelessly climbing mountains in Georgia. Be aware: the highest mountain there is 5,203 m above sea level. Standing on top of that is powerful and gives lots of room for resonance. I hope those echoes can reach you fast.

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In La Grazia, Sorrentino reunites with his majestic muse, Toni Servillo, who plays Mariano De Santis—a fictional, widowed, and deeply Catholic President of Italy. He lingers through empty corridors, filling the silence with rap music, haunted forty years later by the infidelity of his late wife and the fear of public disapprobation. Accompanied by the smoke of cigarettes and endless philosophical dialogues, he finds himself in a search for grace.

Above everything else, Mariano De Santis lives in a sophisticated, opulent, and pretentious world. It is the staged “Great Beauty” of sartorial gods walking through gilded hallways. When I come close to it—close enough to share the same air as the cinema lounge—my unpolished world collapses, and I feel like the screen starts looking down on me. I am afraid it is not the film’s fault; it is simply a matter of the distance between us. I am certain that even cleaning my glasses would not help me to see the soul behind the silk. Or maybe the soul here is just a bit... visually over-tailored?

It is a matter of taste, but also of moral weight. One of the film’s most important anchors is the heavy responsibility of decision-making: a controversial bill to legalize euthanasia and pleas for clemency for those who killed their sick partners as an act of love. These stories gave me a throwback to Michael Haneke’s Amour, where Georges and Anne face the same fate—where death gave their love a deeper, sharper meaning. In La Grazia, death and love slowly build their own “geometry of mercy,” but it drifts away like a tear in zero gravity, that can’t be reached from the screen. It still gives these heavy burdens a sense of great relief, perhaps at the cost of their weight.

I find it beautiful to see a man embrace his own fragility and project it onto such a grand surface. I admire it, but only from the great distance that exists between me and the film. Believe me, I tried to walk toward it in those long, decorated halls, searching for a connection. Just as surely as I tried to run away from it on the treadmill immediately after the screening, desperate to disassociate. I felt tortured.

But one thought has started to obsessively haunt me, like Mariano De Santis’s wife: if Sorrentino decided to torture me on purpose, instead of allowing me a metaphorical mercy-kill, then I admit, it was a brilliant move. I promise, I will clean my glasses. But if torturing the viewer was not in his plan, I will plead for mercy one last time—with what little grace I have left.

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I might have listened to his song one time too many. Frankly, I follow repetitive patterns all the time—I tend to listen to the same song on repeat, and I watch the same films over and over again. I count those in my mind, on an imaginary list of things I love, the same way Letterboxd does. And I can talk about those films for hours at any time of day.

But take into account: I tend to be forgetful about things I dislike. When it comes to film, I can always look back at my Letterboxd stats and analyze my hatred. It looks more complicated when it comes to real life, where I tend to make the same mistakes all over. Sometimes, they count me out.

Last year, I wanted to change these tendencies. Stepping on the same rake again was out of the question. I eliminated the one thing that irritated me the most—dating men. Suddenly, my mind was filled with that fruitful space we call free time. So I filled it with something I love the most: film. Not gonna lie, I slipped back a couple of times. But that happened only after I watched 365 films—a film a day. Then I suddenly remembered I can bear a date or two. To make it work, I needed to leave my carefully curated cinematic world at home. I did not think too long and booked a flight to Italy, a place where I could possibly live my dating Dolce Vita to the fullest. Who knew I was going to land in its Italian cinematic Neorealism version instead and step on the rake again.

It was late December, a time when people find themselves between two phases of a long, cozy winter sleep. A little break for Christmas and New Year’s, and everyone is back enjoying cold, dark nights under warm blankets. I thought that was the best thing one could do—at least, I thought so the moment I found myself walking through the empty streets of Palermo.

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In the early morning, the sun shines softly, magically lighting up the darkest corners of your mind so shame can cut your heart into pieces without permission. That morning, I was full of hope, thinking that this time I was lucky and hadn’t made the same mistake. But mistrust was racing in me, just as my heart had been racing the moment that handsome Italian guy was passionately kissing me under an orange tree.

So there I was, surrounded by romantic scenery, full of hope, but somehow I could not stop thinking about one Italian film. A film that means everything to me because it shows the bare, naked heart of a woman broken by men over and over again—yet who still finds the power to live and hope. I was thinking about Cabiria from Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. This film always reminds me why I don’t want to date men anymore.

Just like me, Cabiria knows what it is to step on the same rake again and again. She is a different kind; she always finds the power to stand up, smile, shake it off, and go on to the next level of learning. From the very first scene of the film, you see how comically expressive her face is and how deeply sad her life carries her being.

The film starts with a betrayal so literal it’s almost a joke: the man she loves, Giorgio, pushes her into a river just to steal her purse and run away. She almost drowns, yet the moment she is pulled out and dried off, she is already looking for him, unable to believe that “love” could be that transactional. Can you believe men would try to drown someone for 40,000 lira?

I am stumbling upon my own disbelief when I hear those words. But my daily reality check reminds me of stories happening here and there. Like the one about Gisèle Pelicot, a woman in her 70s who was drugged with lorazepam by her own husband so strangers could rape her while she was unconscious. Or another story that came to the surface literally yesterday and shocked me on a deep level: German actress Collien Fernandes was allegedly sexually abused by her own ex-husband, who for years had been creating fake profiles in her name on various online platforms so he could send nude photos and videos of her to men from her professional circle.

This is cheaper than 5,000 Lira. A different kind of math. A different kind of counting. This makes me sick to my stomach. Will there ever be redemption?

I am not sure about real life. But there might be none for Cabiria. It depends on which side you look at it: she gains a lot and loses twice as much; she cries but smiles the next moment and cries again after. Not because she has soft, thin skin, but because every rake she steps on is not built of the same material. And once she finds a man she can trust, she is back again on that rake, stumbling.

I wonder what exactly inspired Federico Fellini to write this character. Was it only Giulietta Masina’s performance in The White Sheik? Or something else?

Toward the end of his life, Fellini stated:

I tend to believe she did find her love and her life emerged into the beautiful Dolce Vita story she deserved. We never heard about it because this love was quiet and pure—the kind of love that is not for show.

My Palermo story has a different turn. It was not meant to see the light of day, to begin with. It is not a happy one; it has been screaming loudly inside me since that morning light brightened my fears and gave me another lesson, one carved from orange tree branches.

I am back to 365 films, every day. It’s a plan in the making. I am at film 70 now, just 9 films behind schedule. We are back to counting films on my Letterboxd, and it makes me think I want to rewatch Nights of Cabiria and maybe, through that, forget that truthful early morning sunlight in Palermo—when I walked home and felt like Cabiria in the final scene of the film, trying to decide if I was ready to smile at the next group of people passing by.

Even Harry Styles is singing in Italian about that man playing me. I could not help myself and had to sing along.

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To break out of that cloudy circle, I decided I needed a surprise. So there I was, wrapped in a huge woolen scarf, marching through the cold rain toward a 9 p.m. “Surprise Film” screening. I was without an umbrella, but I was carrying the hope that there was still a 50% chance of seeing something sublime. Surprise screenings are a volatile game— one I love and hate in equal measure. But I had suffered enough through the gray weather, so I gambled on my luck. The result was something singular: a film I’d never heard of, but one I already want to rewatch. It is a story for people who crave beautiful narratives, complex characters, and electrifying editing.

May I introduce you to A Poet by Simón Mesa Soto— a surreal, tragicomic journey that premiered at Cannes. Colombia has selected this Un Certain Regard winner as its official submission for the 98th Academy Awards.

But let’s not talk about the Oscars. Let’s talk about Oscar.

Oscar Restrepo (Ubeimar Rios) is the washed-up, “loser” poet that many of us in the creative world might recognize. We connect with him not because we are failures, but because we know the hard reality of leading a creative life and failing to make ends meet. He is a “loser” you might recognize from a Kaurismäki film, but the Colombian version. The film’s unpredictable rhythm brings you to unexpected places through incredibly creative editing. You are forced to move with him between comedy and tragedy, constantly changing your mind about whether you like him or not.

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But what is there to like? He is an alcoholic, he lives with his mother, and he has no job— yet he views his “profession” as a higher calling. He might alienate you at first, but he grows on you. He is a character that gets under your skin. Even his appearance makes you wonder: what planet did he arrive from? And how soon will he leave again? But suddenly, you don’t want him to go. He keeps your eyes locked and your emotions warm.

“Those films about writers or poets often seem made for the First World – I wanted to create a version of that from the perspective of Colombia, from this tropical, complex, and unique place.”— Simón Mesa Soto.

A Poet is a deeply autobiographical vision for Simón Mesa Soto. He created Oscar’s character based on his own fear of becoming the worst version of himself: a kind of bohemian professor, living off his past, having given up on cinema. But Simon didn’t give up; instead, he created a powerful and moving story. It is a film that might teach you how to find the strength to pick up your pen and write. It’s not a conventional lesson, as you might have imagined after reading that last sentence. It’s an adventure, and you decide where it ends. One thing is certain: you’ll start in Colombia, and it will be great fun.

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Simón Mesa Soto

A graduate of the London Film School, Soto is no stranger to the spotlight. He previously won the Palme d’Or for Short Film at Cannes for Leidi (2014) and his debut feature Amparo (2021) also received critical acclaim. With A Poet, he cements his place as one of the most exciting voices in contemporary Latin American cinema.

My Iranian cinematic adventure began not long ago, and it started with just a simple accident. No, not the Palme d’Or-winning film of the same name, but a “purposeful accident”— a little ritual I maintain. Whenever I’m catching a train or a flight, I download a handful of random films onto my iPad, strictly forbidding myself from reading anything about them beforehand.

I’ve grown to love these “blind” travel screenings: the longer the trip, the deeper the dive. A few months ago, I opted for a ten-hour train from Vienna to Cologne and watched four films. Another time, traveling from Switzerland to Germany, I watched only one: Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. At three hours and twenty-one minutes, the film ended exactly as we pulled into the station. It was a perfect match! I don’t think I would have ever found the patience for such a film if I weren’t trapped on those tracks.

Of course, I’ve also had my fair share of “train-ride regrets.” I’ve sat there flushing fire-red, wishing I could disappear before the next stop because of a particularly awkward scene on my screen. I do care about what strangers might unwillingly see as they pass my seat.

But back to Iran. On a recent trip to Belgium, I “accidentally” downloaded Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House? I knew nothing— no plot summary, no Letterboxd score, no context. Yet, this film became something deeply special to me. I found myself smiling for the entire duration. It wasn’t just a “cute” story; it was a heartwarming ode to friendship, childhood, and honesty. The film unfolded like a poem, line by line, reaching back into my own past. It reminded me of the exact moments I first learned what it meant to be a friend— those first attempts to navigate an adult world where you are not yet seen for who you truly are.

The story is deceptively simple: a young boy named Ahmed accidentally takes his classmate’s notebook home. Knowing that their strict teacher has threatened his friend with expulsion if he fails to complete his homework in that very book, Ahmed sets out on an epic, desperate journey to return it. He travels on foot from his own village to the neighboring village of Koker, navigating a labyrinth of winding paths, steep hills, and confusing back alleys.

What makes the film so gripping isn’t a grand explosion or a dramatic twist; it’s the quiet, crushing weight of childhood responsibility. As Ahmed searches for a house he’s never seen, he is constantly ignored or dismissed by the adults he encounters— busy men too preoccupied with their own lives to understand that, for a child, a misplaced notebook can feel like the end of the world.

So, there I was… watching Ahmed’s adventure unfold on my train ride, smiling non-stop and feeling a rare sense of lightness, as if I had been transported back to my own childhood. At one point, I caught the wandering eye of another passenger sitting a few seats away. I was too shy to explain the reason behind my grin or to recommend the film to a stranger right then and there, and I still regret it a bit. Because I really wanted to share this film. So, I’m doing it here instead: if you have never seen Where Is the Friend’s House?, consider this your sign to watch it.

Now, I’m off to continue my Iranian cinematic adventure. I’ve been diving deep into the worlds of Kiarostami and Panahi on Mubi, especially since so many of their masterpieces are available there now.

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So do I. Since I live in Germany, I tend to forget about Women’s Day entirely. Even though I was born in one of the Soviet republics, in the country of endless forests and moors, and the importance of the March 8th celebration was built into my default mental settings, grown wild on me, I still don’t care much for the day. Maybe it’s because of its ambiguity, or maybe because it’s just one day out of 365, and every day is a celebration-slash-battle?

I don’t know for sure, but through the years of navigating a male-dominated society, I’ve learned how to personalize those settings for new time zones and climates. But why does it always feel like I’m suffering from jet lag?

Yesterday, I came across an article about a new survey stating that nearly a third of Gen Z men across 29 countries1 believe their wives should “obey” them. If you could visualize my thoughts the way cartoons taught us, the clock over my head started ticking backward at 100x speed.

I started feeling dizzy from the speed of this regression, especially since that figure is twice as high as it is for Baby Boomer men. I am no expert on generational characteristics, but I certainly know what it’s like to work one-on-one as a woman with some rather fearless, misogynistic male Boomers.

Reading that made my dizziness progress into fear, the kind of fear that tickles your feet. But instead of running from it, I did what every fearful woman should do: I watched The Circle by Jafar Panahi and celebrated truly fearless women.

Jafar Panahi doesn’t just tell a story in The Circle; he traps us in one. The film follows a group of Iranian women, each picking up the baton of struggle exactly where the previous one left off. There is no “day off” for any of them, and no March 8th celebration offers a real reprieve. These women are never allowed a break. They navigate a world of “No”: no traveling without a man’s permission, no smoking in public, no existing without a guardian. Panahi uses a circular narrative to show that for them, there is no finish line— only a different version of the same obstacle.

I have never been to Iran. I have only faced the unequal reality of the regime through news and film. Yet, I have always held these women’s stories close to my heart, projecting them onto my own life because I have always questioned my place in the world as a woman.

I was seven or eight years old when I realized for the first time that I didn’t really like being a girl. It started simply, within the family, when I was singled out and given my “honorable” spot in the corner, the place where young, opinionated girls belong, with their mouths shut and eyes down.

For years, the sadness of that inequality grew on me like moss on a moor— thick fibers, soaked in rainwater, cold as permafrost. My heart felt the same: frozen without the light of hope, soaked in tears, drowned in a humid sadness. I realized then that the only way to melt the ice was to break the circle.

I have been trying to break my own cycle ever since. It is often more of a fight than a celebration. Or rather, it is a celebration on my own terms, without the mandatory flowers, the hollow “feminine” praises, or the red circle around March 8th on the calendar with nostalgic Soviet motifs on the cover. Those default settings have been overwritten. Now, I celebrate with beautiful, defiant films. If you care for these sad yet vital stories, watch The Circle tomorrow.

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