Must-See Films About Loneliness

Loneliness, in its negative sense, has become one of the predominant feelings in the age we live in. It is a widespread problem, especially in the large Western metropolises, which products and services have tried to address and profit from. From the speed dating of the 2000s to the invention of social networks and virtual communication, people constantly seek contact and connection with others in a society moving in the opposite direction. Understanding loneliness is one of the fundamental steps for developing one’s inner growth.

When someone is left alone, they can feel uncomfortable. They only feel good if they are in company; if they are alone, they are ashamed of it. Sooner or later, everyone is faced with this problem. It affects millions of people because almost all of us are educated in a certain way. Loneliness is rarely encouraged by parents, teachers, or any other social setting we attend as children. A lonely child is always considered a little strange, a child who has problems, perhaps some embryonic form of psychic disorder. These are ideas that have very distant origins and have influenced entire generations.

The more an individual feels shunned by others, the more their anxiety grows to establish contact of any kind. At the same time, however, they begin to avoid any relationship for fear of being rejected. A self-defense mechanism to protect one’s self-esteem and to allay the nervousness that isolation causes.

Loneliness is a subjective perception

In this way, everyone moves further and further away from their own being. The presence of others keeps you in tension, anchored to reality. But if you relax alone with yourself, you are going against what society has instilled in you, towards unknown territory. The lonely individual is seen as a potential danger: they can be completely themselves. Nobody can give you orders, nobody can criticize you or tell you what you must or must not do. You become not the person people want, but something else.

Scientists have found no problems with many people who spend most of their time alone. On the contrary, there are people who have many social relationships but within them experience a deep feeling of negative loneliness and isolation. Why?

The negative feeling of isolation stems from an individual’s subjective perception of others. The quality of their relationships, the frustrations associated with them, the conflicting behaviors, and misunderstandings can make one feel alone even when seemingly in good company. The brain’s activity declines due to anxieties and negative perceptions, leading to a state of constant stress from which it becomes difficult to escape.

Sometimes the best option is to choose to spend time with the right people. To remove that annoying, sometimes unbearable feeling of isolation, we cannot continually try to communicate when there is only a wall in front of us. For the message to reach its destination, the transmitter and receiver must be tuned to the same frequency.

In most cases, the problem can be solved with less effort, without even moving from where you are or changing the people we share our time with. Change can only happen within us, by changing the ideas and beliefs we have about loneliness.

Loneliness as a social conditioning

There are seven hundred centers in the brain. All your actions are decided in those centers. Some psychologists have been able to understand, after lifelong work and attempts, which activities each of these areas of the brain control. Negative emotions and feelings: anger, aggression, depression; or positive emotions such as love, compassion, and solidarity. By inserting electrodes into specific parts of an animal’s brain, they discovered that it was possible to totally control its actions.

By implanting an electrode in a bull’s brain, it was possible to control the animal’s actions and reactions from a distance, using a remote control. The bull no longer attacked the people around him. If the command sent to him was to remain still, he stayed perfectly still. Just like a radio-controlled puppet.

That’s exactly what happened to Alex in A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick. At the final demonstration of the Ludovico cure, his brain had been so conditioned and manipulated that he was completely unable to react with violence. He became defenseless against any abuse due to an unbearable nausea that paralyzed any attempt at a violent reaction. The criminal Alex had become entirely controllable without any effort, like pressing a button on a remote control.

Social conditioning of the mind works in exactly the same way. These are ideas that come to us from the outside but don’t really belong to us. They are ideas, thoughts, beliefs that can be completely reversed.

Nobody put an electrode in your brain, but social conditioning works the same way. By freeing the mind from beliefs about what is right and what is wrong, and by regaining one’s individuality, the perception of loneliness can change from negative to positive.

Loneliness as isolation

The exact term is therefore not loneliness but isolation. Loneliness often has a positive meaning: it is sought after and experienced as a creative and fulfilling moment. There are millions of people who can be defined as loners, who don’t like being too much around people and prefer to cultivate their inner world.

Negative loneliness and isolation arise from the complete absence of authenticity in our relationships with others. While there may be no shortage of encounters and connections, we perceive them as artificial and superficial. They do not reflect who we are, and we feel misunderstood. In most cases, however, the root cause lies within the individual experiencing these feelings. They try to defend themselves, voluntarily withdrawing from others to protect themselves, avoid negative thoughts, and steer clear of stressful situations. They may behave in a hostile manner, react exaggeratedly or violently, easily enter into disputes, yet remain unaware of it. We ourselves create our loneliness, both positively and negatively.

Loneliness in the various seasons of life

Our perspective on loneliness undergoes a significant transformation throughout different stages of our life. In childhood and adolescence, it is an uncommon occurrence, seldom experienced in our youth. However, as we transition into adulthood, the sensation of loneliness becomes more prevalent, gradually intensifying as we age. During this journey, our focus moves from external circumstances to internal experiences, fostering a deeper understanding that external conditions and relationships may not bring about substantial changes within ourselves. We come to realize that an external adventure, no matter how thrilling or extensive, remains incomplete without a concurrent voyage into our inner world. In the evolving landscape of our lives, this shift becomes crucial, as it underscores the importance of inner exploration for genuine personal growth and fulfillment.

From this perspective, loneliness could arguably be considered the most ideal condition attainable. It suggests a profound introspection where the focus is directed inward rather than to the external world. This inward journey is seen as the true path to personal growth, allowing for deeper self-discovery and development. Yet, concurrently, connections with others and emotional bonds hold a crucial role in maintaining our mental and physical equilibrium. These relationships contribute to our sense of support and belonging, which are vital for overall well-being. Thus, while the solitude of our inner realm fosters individual growth, the companionship and emotional ties with others provide the essential stability needed for a balanced life.

Films on Loneliness to Watch

This guide is a journey across the entire spectrum. It is a path that unites the great classics we all know with the most intimate independent productions. We will explore the different faces of isolation: from the deafening solitude of metropolises to the empty vastness of desolate landscapes, from the prisons of the mind to the quiet desperation of the everyday.

Lost in Translation

Bob Harris, a fading movie star, and Charlotte, a young recent graduate, meet in Tokyo. Both feel lost, disconnected from their own lives and overwhelmed by the foreignness of the Japanese metropolis. In the middle of the night, amidst the neon lights and language barriers, they find in each other an unexpected and fleeting solace, a bond that goes beyond friendship and love.

Sofia Coppola’s analysis captures a specific form of loneliness: the one that arises from uprooting and feeling out of sync with one’s own existence. Tokyo is not just an exotic backdrop but the physical embodiment of their inner state. Its neon lights, the incomprehensible crowds, and the constant language barrier amplify their sense of alienation, turning the hotel into an island of shared melancholy. Theirs is not a conventional love story, but an elegy on “melan-boredom” and the untranslatability of certain bonds, born and consumed in a bubble of mutual isolation.

Shame

Brandon is a successful man in New York, charming and reserved, but a slave to a severe sex addiction. His life, made up of casual encounters and pornography, is a mechanism to avoid any form of real intimacy. The sudden arrival of his emotionally unstable sister Sissy disrupts his controlled routine, forcing him to confront the void he desperately tries to fill.

Steve McQueen transcends the simple diagnosis of “addiction” to explore a sociological condition. Brandon’s loneliness is a symptom of a culture that offers infinite choices but no meaning, where every desire can be instantly gratified, nullifying the value of human connection. His luxurious minimalist apartment is a glass prison, as sterile as his relationships. Shame is a chilling descent into modern loneliness, where the inability to love becomes the deepest shame.

Her

In the near future, Theodore Twombly, a sensitive and lonely man recovering from a divorce, purchases a new operating system based on advanced artificial intelligence. Named Samantha, the AI proves to be witty, profound, and surprisingly human. A romantic relationship develops between them that challenges the conventions of love and connection, but also raises questions about the nature of consciousness and loneliness.

Spike Jonze projects urban loneliness into a plausible future, where technology offers a seductive yet ambiguous remedy for human disconnection. The Los Angeles of the film, with its pastel colors and clean architecture, appears as a utopia hiding a deep emotional dystopia. Theodore’s relationship with Samantha is a touching paradox: he finds deep intimacy with an artificial consciousness while drifting further and further away from the physical world. Her is a melancholic and brilliant reflection on how, in the digital age, the search for an antidote to loneliness can lead us into even more isolated territories.

Chungking Express

In Hong Kong, the lives of two heartbroken policemen casually intertwine with those of two enigmatic women. The first, Officer 223, becomes obsessed with expiration dates after being dumped, until he meets a mysterious drug smuggler in a blonde wig. The second, Officer 663, drowns his sorrow by talking to household objects, until the dreamy Faye secretly starts breaking into his apartment to change his life.

Wong Kar-wai captures the essence of metropolitan loneliness with an intoxicating visual style. Hong Kong is a labyrinth of neon and crowds where the characters are emotional islands. The director masterfully uses techniques like step-printing to show the protagonists frozen in their pain while the world rushes past them. The two parallel stories reflect the nature of life in a big city: countless lonely hearts brush past each other, sometimes meet, but rarely merge. It is a visual poem about love, loss, and the randomness of encounters in urban anonymity.

The Conversation

Harry Caul is a surveillance expert, a meticulous and obsessively private professional. Hired to record the conversation of a young couple in a crowded San Francisco square, he becomes convinced he has uncovered a murder plot. His paranoia grows as he replays the tapes, and his professional detachment crumbles, dragging him into a spiral of guilt and fear that threatens to destroy his isolated world.

Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece is the ultimate tragedy of professional isolation. Harry’s job is to invade the privacy of others, but his life is a fortress built to protect his own. His loneliness is an occupational hazard that has consumed his entire existence. Through a brilliant and claustrophobic sound design, the film traps the viewer in Harry’s paranoid mind, making his isolation a tangible and suffocating experience. He is a man destroyed by his own expertise.

A Better Life

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Drama, thriller, by Fabio Del Greco, Italy, 2007.
Rome: Andrea Casadei is a young investigator specializing in audio wiretapping who conducts investigations commissioned by husbands betrayed by their wives, or by parents worried about what their children are doing outside the home. But what interests him most is understanding the human soul, listening to casual conversations in the streets, knowing what people think. He often meets in Piazza Navona with his friend Gigi, a frustrated street artist obsessed with success at all costs, with whom he shares a passion for wiretapping. Shocked by the mystery of the disappearance of Ciccio Simpatia, another street artist common friend, Andrea decides to abandon the commissioned works to seek a better life and reflect on his own and others' existence. He will meet the actress Marina and with a bug he will slowly enter her life until he discovers her most unthinkable secrets. The film deals with an important theme of contemporary Western society: the lack of love. The mysterious and tormented figure of Marina is reflected in a gloomy and soulless Rome.

Director Fabio Del Greco declared about his film: "Perhaps this film is a reflection on the art of observing, of listening, in short, of what one does when one leaves the real world to tell about it. Perhaps he wants to talk about the subtle relationship between the mirages of success touted by today's society, power and the most authentic human relationships.A 'dark cloud' hangs over the city: it is engulfing everyone in a sort of indistinct, uniform mass, where everyone thinks the same things, where everyone they are more alone. Where is the truest part that makes us unique? Maybe you can try to intercept it only secretly."

LANGUAGE: Italian
SUBTITLES: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Dutch.

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Paris, Texas

A man, Travis, reappears in the Texas desert after a four-year absence, mute and suffering from amnesia. His brother Walt finds him and brings him back to Los Angeles, where Travis slowly begins to reconnect with his seven-year-old son, Hunter. Together, father and son embark on a journey to find Jane, the missing wife and mother, in an attempt to piece together the fragments of a broken family.

The Texan desert, with its endless horizons and desolation, is the perfect metaphor for Travis’s emotional state: an empty man, lost in an arid inner landscape. Wim Wenders strips away the American myth of the frontier and freedom, transforming the “road movie” into a melancholic pilgrimage towards memory and redemption. Travis’s loneliness is not just the absence of people, but the absence of self. His journey is not an escape, but a painful attempt to return.

Nomadland

After losing everything in the Great Recession, Fern, a woman in her sixties, decides to leave her town in rural Nevada. She packs her belongings into her van and hits the road, exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern nomad. Traversing the vast landscapes of the American West, Fern discovers a community of people who, like her, have chosen or been forced to live on the margins.

Chloé Zhao directs a contemporary elegy for a forgotten America, where the American Dream has dissolved into the dust of back roads. Fern’s loneliness is both a choice of freedom and a consequence of a ruthless economic system. The film, with its almost documentary-like style, captures with immense dignity the resilience of those living on the fringes, contrasting the majestic beauty of American landscapes with the harsh reality of survival. Hers is a loneliness populated by fleeting encounters, a poetic testimony to the search for home when a home no longer exists.

Into the Wild

Immediately after graduating, brilliant student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandons his comfortable life, donates his savings to charity, and sets off on a journey across North America. Adopting the name Alexander Supertramp, he seeks a more authentic existence, free from the constraints of materialism. His search for solitary enlightenment ultimately leads him into the Alaskan wilderness, where he will face his greatest challenge.

Sean Penn’s film explores the romantic allure and dangers of radical solitude. Christopher’s escape from society is a philosophical experiment, an attempt to strip away everything to find the essential core of life. His isolation is a deliberate choice, a total rejection of human bonds in favor of communion with nature. Its tragic conclusion, with the epiphany that “happiness is only real when shared,” serves as a powerful warning about the intrinsic need for human connection.

Wendy and Lucy

Wendy, a young woman with little money, is traveling to Alaska in search of work, accompanied by her only companion, her dog Lucy. When her old car breaks down in a small Oregon town, her already precarious situation collapses. After being arrested for petty theft, she discovers that Lucy has disappeared, beginning a desperate search that exposes her total vulnerability.

Kelly Reichardt creates a minimalist masterpiece about economic loneliness. Wendy’s isolation is not an existential choice, but the direct result of a system that offers no safety nets. Every small obstacle—a broken-down car, a fine, a lost dog—becomes an insurmountable catastrophe. The film, with its sober and undramatized style, shows with heartbreaking clarity how poverty is the most extreme form of isolation, leaving individuals completely alone in an indifferent world.

Corona days

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Drama, by Fabio Del Greco, Italy, 2020.
A man remains alone at home due to the Corona virus emergency measures. Solitude, time, and space become his adversaries, while imagination, memories, and the yearning for freedom become his allies. Director Fabio Del Greco intimately and personally documents the days of Corona virus isolation, filming outdoor scenes exclusively with a smartphone. The chronicle of these peculiar days serves as a catalyst for reflection on the relativity of time and space, and how freedom is something that can transcend reality to find its place within our souls.

In the times of the Corona virus, a genuine and instinctive filmmaker like Del Greco has reaped the fruits of his eccentric "cinediary" crafted during the quarantine weeks. He captured his own solitude up close, and from a safe distance, that of his friends and relatives. Above all, he seized the limited "hours of air" granted by authorities to film in a world emptied of humanity and subjected to rigorous police checks. All seen through the lens of an author who, as usual, is playful, disillusioned, and subtly ironic, even when he steps in as an actor. As he continues to explore reality, amidst melancholic insights and flashes of irony, Fabio Del Greco transcends this initial intent and transforms his feature film into a set of Russian nesting dolls, where diverse audiovisual contributions converge. These contributions may be chronologically disparate, yet they are all profoundly stimulating and laden with meaning. The interplay between present and past, expertly orchestrated even in the editing, creates a short-circuit where the past isn't merely an almanac of memories but another escape into the realm of imagination. As a socio-political critique surfaces, albeit legitimate, the narrative gradually shifts toward a broader existential framework.

LANGUAGE: italian
SUBTITLES: english, french, german, portuguese, spanish

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First Cow

In 1820s Oregon, Otis “Cookie” Figowitz, a gentle and lonely cook, joins a group of rough fur trappers. He meets King-Lu, a Chinese immigrant on the run, and an unlikely friendship blossoms between them. Together, they devise a plan: to secretly milk the territory’s only cow, owned by a wealthy Englishman, to make and sell delicious fried cakes. Their small business is successful, but it is as profitable as it is risky.

Contrary to the myth of the individualistic pioneer, Kelly Reichardt portrays the American frontier as a place of alienation where friendship is the only true wealth. The loneliness of the two protagonists, both outsiders in a hostile world, is soothed by their tender and silent complicity. First Cow is a bittersweet tale about how companionship and collaboration can create a “nest” of human warmth even in the most desolate of landscapes, an ode to the fragility and beauty of bonds that form against all odds.

The Wrestler

Robin Ramzinski, known in the ring as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, was a wrestling star in the 1980s. Twenty years later, he is a shadow of his former self: he lives in a trailer, works part-time at a supermarket, and performs in small-town gyms for little money and a bit of past glory. After a heart attack, doctors forbid him from fighting. Alone and desperate, Randy tries to piece his life back together, attempting to reconnect with his daughter and a stripper.

Randy’s loneliness is that of the artist at sunset, a man whose identity is inextricably linked to the applause of the crowd. Darren Aronofsky captures his desperation with a raw and realistic style, setting the story in the desolate and melancholic landscapes of New Jersey. It is outside the ring that Randy feels truly alone and invisible. His battered body is the map of his existence, and the only time he doesn’t feel alone is when he offers himself as a sacrifice to his audience, in a tragic performance of self-destruction.

Repulsion

Carole Ledoux is a young and beautiful Belgian manicurist living in London with her sister. Shy and introverted, she harbors a deep repulsion for men and their advances. When her sister leaves for a vacation, Carole finds herself alone in the apartment. Her forced isolation triggers a rapid and terrifying descent into madness, populated by surreal hallucinations and violent impulses.

This is the quintessential film about psychological confinement. Roman Polanski transforms an ordinary London apartment into a hellish landscape that is a direct projection of Carole’s fractured mind. The walls crack, invisible hands grab at her, the domestic space becomes a surreal and threatening prison. Her loneliness is not a condition, but an active force that distorts reality. Repulsion is a chilling and masterful analysis of how repression and isolation can breed monsters.

Manchester by the Sea

Lee Chandler works as a handyman in Boston, leading a solitary and taciturn life. The sudden death of his older brother Joe forces him to return to his hometown, Manchester-by-the-Sea, where he discovers he has been named the legal guardian of his teenage nephew, Patrick. This forced return compels him to confront a tragic past that has separated him from his family and community.

Lee Chandler’s isolation is a form of self-punishment, a life sentence he has inflicted upon himself to atone for an unbearable pain. Kenneth Lonergan explores grief not as a process with a beginning and an end, but as a permanent state of being. The film’s non-linear structure immerses us in Lee’s fragmented present, slowly revealing the source of his trauma. His inability to “get over it” is the heartbreaking portrait of a man forever imprisoned in his past, whose loneliness is a necessary armor for survival.

The Exterminating Angel

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Drama, by Luis Bunuel, Mexico, 1962.
The plot revolves around a group of people who gather in a sumptuous villa for a gala dinner. However, after dinner, they find that they are unable to leave the villa, despite the fact that the doors and windows are barred and the exits apparently blocked. What follows is a kind of surreal nightmare where the group of guests are trapped in the villa and their behaviors and social relationships begin to degrade in a bizarre way.

The film deals with themes of social conformity, alienation, and the downfall of social conventions. It is known for its surreal sequences and the way it challenges reality and traditional logic. "The Exterminating Angel" is often interpreted as a satirical critique of the upper class and self-righteous social norms. This film has become an icon of Surrealist cinema and represents one of Luis Buñuel's most distinctive and provocative works. It is prized for both its conceptual complexity and visual extravagance, and has been influential in the film world for its ability to push the boundaries of the cinematic art. At the time, many thought it was the last film of Bunuel's career. It was, however, the first of a series of masterpieces.

LANGUAGE: Spanish
SUBTITLES: English

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Three Colors: Blue

After losing her husband, a famous composer, and her daughter in a car accident, Julie decides to erase her past. She tries to free herself from every bond, memory, and possession, seeking absolute freedom in the anonymity of Paris. However, the past constantly resurfaces, especially through her husband’s unfinished music, which haunts her like a sonic ghost, forcing her to confront her pain.

Krzysztof Kieślowski stages a radical attempt at emotional self-exile. The “freedom” Julie seeks is an escape from suffering through total detachment. Her isolation is a deliberate choice, an attempt to become a blank slate. The director uses the color blue and recurring musical motifs as powerful metaphors for the intrusive memories she cannot erase. Her journey shows that true freedom is not found in isolation, but in the difficult and painful reconnection with the world and with others.

Anomalisa

Michael Stone is a successful author of motivational books on customer service, but he is deeply unhappy and unable to connect with others. During a business trip to Cincinnati, he perceives everyone around him, including his family, as identical: same face, same monotonous voice. His despair lessens when he meets Lisa, an insecure woman whose unique voice and appearance break his homogeneous perception of the world.

This stop-motion masterpiece by Charlie Kaufman is a profound study of solipsistic loneliness. The brilliant choice to represent almost all characters with the same model and voice is a perfect externalization of Michael’s depression and his inability to see the individuality of others. He lives in a world of clones because he is trapped within himself, in a “mysterious prison of identity.” Anomalisa explores the hope and subsequent disillusionment of finding in another person the cure for one’s own isolation.

The Man Who Wasn’t There

California, 1949. Ed Crane is a laconic and impassive barber living a gray, aimless existence. He smokes one cigarette after another, watching life pass him by with detachment. When he discovers his wife is cheating on him with her boss, he decides to blackmail him to finance a dry-cleaning business. This single act of initiative triggers an unpredictable chain of events that includes murder, deception, and even UFOs.

The Coen brothers, with their impeccable noir style, paint the definitive portrait of existential emptiness. Ed Crane is not simply alone; he is almost absent, a spectator in his own life, as the title suggests. His isolation is not painful, but apathetic. He is a man moving through an absurd and meaningless universe, a ghost in a world that doesn’t seem to notice him. His loneliness is so profound it becomes a metaphysical condition.

Buffalo ’66

Fresh out of prison, Billy Brown is desperate to impress his parents, who know nothing of his incarceration and believe he is a successful man. To maintain the charade, he kidnaps a young tap dancer, Layla, and forces her to pretend to be his wife. During the surreal and tense visit home, Billy’s deep trauma emerges, a man scarred by a loveless childhood and an obsession with the Buffalo Bills football team.

Vincent Gallo’s film is a raw and painful self-portrait, a dysfunctional cry against loneliness. Billy’s aggressive and unstable behavior is a mask for a desperate need for love and acceptance. The kidnapping of Layla is a perverse attempt to “script” a connection he is unable to create. Buffalo ‘66 is a bitter and personal fantasy about the possibility of finding an unconditional love that can heal the wounds of a lifetime of rejection and self-hatred.

The Kempinsky method

Now Available

Drama, by Federico Salsano, Italy 2020.
The introspective imaginary road movie of a man in the maze of his own mind, his memories of his youth, his never dormant passions and contradictory truths. The road is made of water, the destination is falsely unknown. His traveling companions are three mysterious men, projections of his imagination and of different aspects of his personality: the perennial melancholy, the crazy creative, the introverted child. He is also followed by a female presence that tells the umpteenth human story. At a certain point of the crossing he decides to abandon the boat and his ghosts of him diving into the sea and arrives swimming on a deserted beach, naked, with a small Pinocchio puppet closed by a padlock.

Food for thought
Life is like a long sea voyage and the human being is a small creature confronting immensity. Sometimes the ocean is calm, other times there are terrible storms. Sometimes we are captains of a boat with a well-defined route, other times we are shipwrecked in search of a land in which to save ourselves. But despite the long journey and the movement in physical space, there are other questions that resonate in the mind: who are these men I travel with? What is the mystery of this immense mass of water that seems to be made of my memories? You can circumnavigate the whole world but the main question always remains the same: who am I really?

LANGUAGE: italian
SUBTITLES: english, spanish, portuguese, german, french

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A Ghost Story

A musician, C, dies in a car accident. His ghost, covered by a simple white sheet, returns to the house he shared with his wife, M. Unable to communicate and leave that place, he silently watches her grief, her slow moving on, and the arrival of new tenants. His is a motionless journey through time, an eternal wait tied to a small note M hid in a crack in the wall.

David Lowery creates a poetic and heartbreaking meditation on grief, time, and attachment, seen from the unique perspective of the deceased. The figure of the ghost, iconic and almost childlike, becomes a powerful symbol of a loneliness that transcends human time. Trapped in a cycle of memory and desire, the ghost experiences the most absolute isolation: that of being an invisible witness as the world he knew dissolves. It is a film about the difficulty of letting go, an elegy on the eternity of feeling.

Moon

Sam Bell is nearing the end of his three-year contract as the sole operator of a mining base on the Moon. His only company is GERTY, an artificial intelligence. A few weeks before his return home, Sam begins to suffer from hallucinations. After an accident, he makes a shocking discovery that forces him to question his identity, his sanity, and the very nature of his existence.

Duncan Jones’s film explores a dual loneliness: the physical loneliness of a man alone in space, and the even more terrifying existential loneliness. The discovery of the clones transforms a drama about isolation into a philosophical thriller about the loss of identity. What does it mean to be alone when you discover you are not unique? Moon is a touching and intelligent reflection on what defines our humanity when it becomes a mass-produced, disposable consumer good.

Wild Strawberries

The elderly and distinguished professor Isak Borg must travel from Stockholm to Lund to receive an academic honor. Instead of flying, he decides to make the journey by car, accompanied by his daughter-in-law Marianne. Along the way, a series of encounters, dreams, and memories force him to re-examine his life, characterized by emotional coldness, selfishness, and a deep sense of isolation.

Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece is an inner journey into the loneliness of old age and regret. The road to Lund becomes a pilgrimage into Isak’s memory, a confrontation with missed opportunities and uncultivated relationships. Bergman masterfully blends dream and reality, showing how the loneliest place can be one’s own past, a gallery of ghosts and wrong choices. It is a profound work on the possibility of redemption, on reconciling with oneself before time runs out.

Solaris

Psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to a space station orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris to investigate strange events plaguing the crew. Once aboard, he discovers that the planet is a sentient entity capable of materializing the deepest memories and regrets of human beings. Soon, Kris is also visited by a replica of his deceased wife, Hari, forcing him to relive the pain and guilt of their relationship.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s film is not a space adventure, but an abyssal exploration of the human psyche. Solaris acts as a mirror, reflecting the inner universe of the characters. The work is a profound meditation on grief, memory, and the impossibility of escaping oneself, even at the edges of the cosmos. Kris’s loneliness is that of a man trapped in his past, condemned to interact with a ghost that is both his beloved and the symbol of his failure.

The Last Laugh

Now Available

Drama, by F.W. Murnau, Germany, 1924.
Jannings is the doorman of the Atlantic hotel in Berlin, happy with his role and his uniform. But his boss thinks he is too old to receive customers at the entrance and sets him up to clean the bathrooms. Jannings, deeply troubled by what happened, gets drunk in the evening to forget what happened and tries to hide his new degrading job from family and friends. But the next day he is discovered. Absolute masterpiece by Murnau, in balance between expressionism and kammespiel. The camera comes to life in an incredibly avant-garde style of visual experimentation.

Food for thought
For the ego, uniform and respectable work can be an absolute value. For the ego, being put to clean toilets can be the worst of humiliations. Because the ego reasons according to the opinions of others and wants us to conform to their scale of values. For our deepest selves, however, it may be more fun to clean bathrooms than to be a doorman at the hotel entrance.

LANGUAGE: German (captions)
SUBTITLES: English

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Taste of Cherry

Mr. Badii, a middle-aged man, drives his car through the arid hills on the outskirts of Tehran. He has a precise plan: he wants to commit suicide, and he is looking for someone willing to do a simple job for a large sum of money: return the next morning to the spot he has chosen and throw earth on his grave. During his search, he meets a Kurdish soldier, a theology student, and an elderly taxidermist, each with their own view of life and death.

Abbas Kiarostami’s minimalist film is a pure exercise in existential loneliness. We do not know Mr. Badii’s reasons, and this omission forces the viewer to confront not the causes of his pain, but the value of life itself. His search is not just for a gravedigger, but for one last, fleeting act of human connection. It is a philosophical and contemplative work that questions our capacity for empathy in the face of another’s despair, when all that remains is to lose the “taste” of life.

L’eclisse

Vittoria, a young translator, ends a relationship with an intellectual. Shortly after, she meets Piero, a dynamic and materialistic stockbroker. An attraction develops between them, but their relationship is fragmented, marked by moments of intimacy and long silences, by meetings and unkept promises. Their inability to connect deeply reflects a broader malaise, an alienation that pervades the modern world.

The final chapter of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “trilogy of incommunicability,” L’eclisse is the most radical representation of emotional disconnection. The love story between Vittoria and Piero is a pretext to explore the emptiness that creeps into human relationships. The famous final sequence, in which the camera waits in vain for the two lovers at their meeting place, showing only deserted urban spaces, is the definitive statement on modern loneliness: objects and architecture outlive feelings, and absence becomes the only, deafening presence.

Red Desert

Giuliana, the wife of an industrial engineer, lives in Ravenna in a state of deep psychological distress. She is surrounded by a spectral industrial landscape of smokestacks, colored fumes, and metallic sounds. Her neurosis and sense of alienation are a direct reflection of the dehumanized environment in which she is immersed. An encounter with her husband’s colleague, Corrado, seems to offer an escape, but it proves to be just another form of incommunicability.

Antonioni’s first color film, Red Desert uses the color palette expressionistically to paint a sick soul. The unnatural colors of the industrial landscape—the yellow of sulfur, the gray of fog, the red of metal structures—are not realistic, but are the filter of Giuliana’s anguished perception. Her loneliness is that of a sensitive and fragile human being in a world that has violently supplanted nature with technology, creating a spiritual and emotional void.

Paterson

Paterson is a bus driver who lives in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. His life is marked by a simple and unchanging routine: he wakes up, goes to work, writes poems in a secret notebook, returns home to his whimsical wife Laura, and walks their bulldog, Marvin, stopping for a beer at the neighborhood bar. Every day is similar to the last, but Paterson finds beauty and inspiration in the small details of daily life.

Jim Jarmusch’s film is a celebration of contemplative solitude. Paterson’s is not a condition of suffering, but a protected space that nurtures his creativity. His routine is not a prison, but the structure that allows him to observe the world with a poet’s eyes. It is an ode to the beauty of ordinary life, a gentle portrait of how loneliness can be not a void to be filled, but a fertile silence in which to listen to the hidden music in things.

There is a salad standing between us

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Short film, comedy, by Alice Von Gwinner, Germany, 2017.
42nd Open Air Filmfest Weiterstadt / 49th Nashville Film festival. The length of their dining table and the unreachable salad bowl in the center has become a symbol of their slowly freezing relationship. Today the time has finally come to change the scene. But what do the portraits on the wall think of all this?

LANGUAGE: german
SUBTITLES: Italian, English, Spanish, French, German

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Inside Llewyn Davis

Greenwich Village, 1961. Llewyn Davis is a talented folk singer trying to make it as a solo artist after the suicide of his musical partner. Penniless and homeless, he moves from one couch to another, alienating friends and lovers with his surly character and chronic bad luck. His is a circular journey through a freezing week, a picaresque odyssey in search of a gig, a lost cat, and perhaps himself.

The Coen brothers tell the story of the loneliness of the uncompromising artist, a man trapped in a loop of failure and pride. Llewyn’s isolation is largely self-inflicted, a consequence of his refusal to compromise and his romantic attachment to his own misery. He is a man out of time, a purist in a world about to be swept away by Bob Dylan. His story, melancholic and tragicomic, is like one of his songs: an endless lament on the difficulty of being alone with one’s art.

The Consequences of Love

Titta Di Girolamo has been living in an anonymous hotel room in Switzerland for eight years. His life is a ritual of boredom, silence, and secrets. Every week, he delivers a briefcase full of money on behalf of the mafia. He talks to no one, does nothing, he simply exists. This sterile equilibrium is broken by his encounter with Sofia, the young and curious hotel bartender. For the first time in years, Titta allows himself to feel something, unleashing unpredictable consequences.

Paolo Sorrentino directs a thriller of the soul, a stylistically impeccable work on the prison of routine. Titta’s loneliness is a fortress he has built around himself, a self-imposed exile to atone for a past mistake. The hotel is his elegant and silent purgatory. The film demonstrates with devastating power how a single, unexpected human connection can bring down the most impenetrable defenses, because the consequences of love are the only force capable of defying death.

Lars and the Real Girl

Lars Lindstrom is an extremely shy and socially awkward young man who lives in his brother and sister-in-law’s garage. Unable to form human relationships, one day he introduces his family to his new girlfriend, Bianca: a life-size anatomical doll purchased online. Concerned, his brother and sister-in-law convince him to see a psychologist, who suggests they go along with his delusion as a form of therapy.

This film offers a unique, tender, and optimistic view of deep social anxiety. Lars’s relationship with Bianca is a delusion born of loneliness, but it becomes an unexpected “vehicle for healing.” The film beautifully explores how a radical act of acceptance by a community can heal not only the individual but the community itself. Lars’s isolation is filled by a wave of collective compassion, showing that sometimes the strangest solutions are the most human.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

For three days, we observe the life of Jeanne Dielman, a middle-aged widow living with her teenage son in a Brussels apartment. Her existence is defined by a meticulous and repetitive domestic routine: she prepares meals, cleans, and shops. To support herself, she occasionally receives male clients in the afternoon. The film documents her daily gestures in real time, showing how a small crack in her routine can lead to a total collapse.

Chantal Akerman’s masterpiece is a monumental and feminist analysis of domestic isolation. By turning the mundane into the epic, the film reveals the oppression and repressed anxiety hidden in the rituals of home life. Jeanne’s rigid routine is not order, but a desperate defense against inner and outer chaos. Her loneliness is the invisible and silent loneliness of countless women whose existence is confined within domestic walls, a seminal work that changed the history of cinema.