The Unconscious and its Relationship With Cinema

The East has always taken much more into consideration the unconscious and the less accessible parts of the mind. In the West, however, society has given much more importance to the conscious mind, to the rational aspect. The importance of listening to the unconscious has been overlooked. In recent decades, however, even in the West, personal growth and issues related to the deepest areas of our psyche have acquired importance.

The unconscious is a huge reservoir of forgotten memories, repressed aspects of our personality and communication with invisible dimensions. Some more or less, we are all in contact with our unconscious but the predominant lifestyle does not give it much importance. The unconscious seems to many people a territory reserved for artists and psychologists. The mysterious world of the irrational seems to belong only to individuals who live outside social norms: who do not have their feet planted on the ground. 

The reality however is that the unconscious comprises 95% of our being. Just 5% belongs to the rational mind and its power is much, much less. However much we can lead a life made up of practical things and rational works, however much we can logically plan all aspects of our existence, it is the great current of the unconscious that directs our destinies. This aspect has been understood in the East for millennia, and for this reason we find all kinds of schools and disciplines that concern the inner dimension.

The Unconscious Creates the External Reality

Many are unwilling to admit it: they will blame the outside world, the partner, the crisis, the competition, and a thousand other external things. But with a deeper self-analysis, meditation techniques and more contact with oneself, we realize that most of the events that occur in our life are the result of the continuous work of the unconscious. A job that lasts 24 hours a day for a lifetime.

The unconscious is the part of us that connects us to remote forgotten experiences but of which we have elaborated, without realizing it, the usefulness. When we are presented with a new situation with emotions and events of the same type, it is our unconscious that tells us how to act, and we do it automatically, just like when we have learned to drive a car or walk. 

In the unconscious there is 95% of the perceptions of the present moment, of the here and now. What we perceive through the senses, we think, we feel is nothing but a small part. If we can ground ourselves for some time in the present moment, forgetting the thoughts, past and future we continually imagine about, then we realize the power of the unconscious. 

The experience of the present moment then appears very rich, and for a few moments we are able to perceive the world as when we were children, without the filter of the rational mind. A filter that begins its process of separating the individual from reality with language learning and grows significantly with school education. The university and the world of work usually represent the final separation with this magic of reality. 

The Lost Poet

Now Available

Drama, by Fabio Del Greco, Italy, 2024.
Dante Mezzadri wants to see an old friend, nicknamed the Iguana, whom he has lost sight of for many years, and who has managed to turn their shared youthful passion for poetry into a job, becoming a famous writer and poet. The man escapes from his bourgeois life and his wife to live homeless on the Roman coast, printing and trying to sell his poetry collections. At night he sleeps in a park of old carnival floats, inside a papier-mâché tank, and waits for the opportunity to meet his old friend, who however never shows up for appointments in the places they frequented when they were young, now in ruins. Dante's poetry books do not interest anyone and to support himself he is forced to "change product": he starts selling the infamous "cannibal pill" on behalf of young drug dealers, a new drug that sells like hot cakes and causes sensory and consumerist ecstasy. However, he realizes that this powerful drug is very dangerous for those who take it, he comes into conflict with his ethical conscience and throws all the pills into the sea. However, the dealers want to collect their money.

Shot over a period of 2 years, the film is a reflection on the cultural and artistic rubble of the society in which the protagonist lives, in an increasingly mechanized, consumerist and arid world. Dante Mezzadri is yet another human being who has renounced his inspiration and his creativity, but unlike many he is not willing to give his life to a system that distances him from his true identity. The physical world around him, however, seems constructed in such a way that it seems impossible to escape from this "invisible cage". The enthusiasm of the people he meets is ignited only by sensory gratification, by unreal visions of personal affirmation and success, by "metaverses" that offer an escape into an illusory and destructive reality. The poet's house on the coast, where he met with his friends as a young man, is just a pile of abandoned rubble. What happened to all those who wanted to become poets and ended up becoming something else? Are there internal forces with which that house can be "rebuilt"?

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

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The Collective Unconscious

But the unconscious is not only us, it also includes a collective unconscious. The mind we carry with us was formed over the centuries and millennia. It brings with it the whole experience of humanity, animals, birds, plants. Somehow the collective unconscious knows all these experiences, it is a dimension of ourselves that is not only ours but universal. 

The unconscious includes, according to the theories of quantum physics, all the present and future potentials that have not materialized but are in a potential state. Getting in touch with your own unconscious can be of enormous value to refine our intuition and look beyond contingent reality. In other words, being able to grasp the potential of worlds that have not materialized, or that perhaps simply live in other dimensions parallel to ours. 

So I don’t exist just for what I am or what I think I am now. There are many other selves who have made different choices. The one who may have chosen to live abroad, the one who has chosen another profession or another partner, an ego that has formed beliefs that are very far from what we have … Each choice is a potential door to another dimension. If certain conditions occur, a world becomes concrete, otherwise another potentiality of it will be realized. 

The unconscious therefore represents 95% of our past, our present and our future, and we can consider it the director of the film of life. But then why in Western society is it so undervalued, and most of the potential uncovered represent only fictional stories? Because without the birth and continuous strengthening of a logical mind and our rational conscious part, the individual cannot be integrated into society, cannot be part of any group, association, school or family. 

Unconscious and Social Rules

The unconscious is an experience of individual depth and cannot be integrated with social structures and rules: it is pure anarchy. But it is an anarchy that can reveal the true flow of things to us. Many people are not willing to venture into the unknown of the unconscious: this would mean being more and more alone and not being able to belong to groups and associations. The unconscious is a force that leads us to the truth but which makes it impossible to follow external rules. The price to pay can therefore be isolation and loneliness. 

The unconscious dealing with the unknown and the unknowable and this is scary. Its power is that what is known today was unknown yesterday, It was possible to know it by going into the unknowable. Science believes that existence can be interpreted at any level, but there is a part of the unknown that cannot be explained from any scientific point of view. 

In fact, many artists are not integrated with social rules and feel the problem of loneliness and marginalization, of the conflict between society and the individual. The logic of the creative man is precisely that of remaining continuously in contact with his own unconscious and the most unknowable currents of his soul. All this takes him inexorably away from the exterior and its rules, from the superficiality of social groups. The creative man inexorably feels that he belongs only to himself and that he can find what he seeks only in his own mind. 

Unconscious and Individual Truth

This moment, however, sooner or later comes for everyone. This descent into the depths of oneself can be postponed for many years, but sooner or later the moment arrives that the superficiality of the external world is no longer enough for us. After postponing for a long time we will be forced to confront our unconscious, the force that has somehow shaped our life. We will be forced to go and seek that truth about ourselves even though we have been concerned with simple and practical things all our life. 

But can one live then only in the world of the unconscious? A lot of artists have done it but ended up having big problems. The potential of the unconscious in fact needs a rational container within which they can be told. Without this container there is a risk of fragmentation and madness. A fragmented self explodes into many small pieces and loses contact with reality: this is what has happened to so many artists. Many others, on the other hand, have also been lucky in the external world and in society: they have managed to integrate the unconscious and consciousness, the rational and irrational world, intuition and logic, mystery and concreteness. 

And certainly this is the real way to go to exploit the richness of the personal and collective unconscious, as explained by the masters of psychology Freud and Jung. Understand that most of us are made up of these boundless irrational worlds but don’t overlook or deny the rules and logic, which allow us to really profit from them. Without a logic and a rational and coherent narration, the submerged treasures of the unconscious are not brought to the surface. 

Cinema and the unconscious

Cinema and psychoanalysis were born almost simultaneously, twin disciplines emerging on the cusp of the 20th century to offer humanity new tools to investigate its inner world. While Sigmund Freud in Vienna was mapping the dark geographies of the psyche, the Lumière brothers in Paris were projecting the first moving images, giving birth to an art form that would prove to be an almost perfect apparatus for visualizing the very structure of the unconscious. This is not just about films that tell psychological stories, but about a cinema that, in its purest and most audacious form, becomes the language of the unconscious.

The avant-garde movements, particularly Surrealism, immediately understood cinema’s potential to mimic the logic of dreams. Techniques like non-linear editing, image superimposition, and fragmented narration are not mere stylistic flourishes but the very grammar of dream logic. This language allows directors to bypass the defenses of rationality and communicate directly with the viewer on a subliminal level, bringing to the surface repressed desires, primal fears, and unconfessed fantasies. The experience of the dark theater, with the spectator passive before the beam of light, replicates the conditions of a pre-conscious state, making cinema a true psychoanalytic machine.

In this radical exploration, independent and auteur cinema has always played a pioneering role. Free from the commercial pressures and narrative formulas imposed by major studios, independent cinema is the territory where authors can venture without a map into the liminal spaces between reality and illusion, sanity and madness, between the conscious Ego and the repressed Other. The films that follow are not simple “psychological thrillers,” but stages of a curated journey through works that use cinematic form and language to dissect, represent, and ultimately, embody the unconscious.

Here is a curated selection of films that perfectly embody the theme of the unconscious:

Beau Is Afraid (2023)

Beau Wassermann is a man paralyzed by chronic anxiety who must embark on a surreal odyssey to reach his mother’s home. His journey is obstructed by increasingly grotesque and bizarre threats, transforming a simple trip into an epic descent through his deepest fears, childhood traumas, and the suffocating influence of an all-powerful maternal figure.

Ari Aster’s third feature is the cinematic manifestation of pure anxiety, a three-hour “nightmare comedy” structured around Freudian phobias and maternal guilt. By pushing the absurd to its breaking point, the film explores the psyche of a man trapped in a state of perpetual, helpless infancy. Joaquin Phoenix delivers a visceral performance that anchors this exhausting journey into the heart of a tormented soul.

Haxan

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Documentary, by Benjamin Christensen, Sweden, 1922.
Desecration of tombs, torture, demon-possessed nuns and witches' sabbath: Haxan, Witchcraft Through the Ages is an incredibly original and unconventional film that has become legendary over time. Between documentary and dramatic fiction, the film guides us through the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered from the same ills as the mentally ill of the modern era. A frightening and at the same time humorous gothic horror, with the creation of documentary and non-fiction sequences that anticipate the innovations of the Nouvelle Vague. Something absolutely unique in the history of cinema.

Food for thought
In Sanskrit Devil and Divine come from the same root, dev. Madness is the dark side of man and it is as natural as the bright side. When you are able to tell a madman that not only is he mad but that you are too, a bridge is immediately created, and it is possible to help him. The nature of life is neither logical nor rational. Life is illogical, wild and contradictory.

LANGUAGE: English, Swedish
SUBTITLES: Spanish, French, German, Portuguese

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Titane (2021)

After a childhood car accident leaves her with a titanium plate in her skull, Alexia develops a disturbing sexual fixation on automobiles. As an adult, she becomes a serial killer and, while on the run, disguises herself as a long-lost boy to find refuge with a grieving fire captain. Simultaneously, her body undergoes a metallic transformation following a bizarre sexual encounter with a car.

Julia Ducournau’s film is a radical exploration of “the new flesh,” utilizing extreme body horror to examine gender identity, trauma, and unconventional forms of love. The narrative balances the grotesque physical changes of the protagonist with a tender drama about found family. It ultimately suggests that creating a new identity and finding connection requires a painful, transformative shedding of traditional social and biological norms.

Come True (2020)

Teenage runaway Sarah joins a university sleep study to escape her recurring nightmares, but the experiment takes a dark turn. As she is monitored by scientists using technology to visualize her dreams, she realizes that her terrifying visions of shadow figures are not only real but are linked to the collective nightmares of the other participants.

Directed by Anthony Scott Burns, this independent work presents an atmospheric exploration of the collective unconscious. The film utilizes a haunting electronic score and lo-fi visual effects to tap into primal anxieties about the nature of sleep and shared psychological spaces. It effectively blurs the line between personal trauma and a broader, more ancient darkness that resides within the human mind.

Climax (2018)

In the mid-1990s, a troupe of dancers gathers for a final rehearsal in an isolated school building. Their celebration turns into a hellish descent when they discover their sangria has been spiked with LSD. As the drug takes control, their inhibitions vanish, leading to an explosion of paranoia, violence, and sexual tension that reveals the animalistic drives hidden beneath their civilized facades.

Gaspar Noé orchestrates a visceral simulation of social collapse and the liberation of the darkest unconscious drives. By using long, fluid takes and a pounding soundtrack, the film immerses the viewer in a collective “bad trip.” It serves as a terrifying exploration of how the thin veneer of civilization can be dissolved, allowing repressed jealousies and primal hysteria to take over the psyche.

Dementia

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Horror, noir, by John Parker, United States, 1955.
It's night. A woman suddenly wakes up from a nightmare in a seedy hotel in the Los Angeles suburbs. She leaves the room and wanders the neighborhood. She meets a dwarf who sells newspapers with the title "Mysterious Stabbing". In a dark alley, a drunkard harasses her and a policeman rescues her. She then she meets a smartly dressed man with a thin mustache. The man gives her a flower and convinces her to get into the limo with a rich fat guy. As they drive through the city, the man thinks back to his childhood trauma and the violent father who stabbed him with a knife after he shot his unfaithful mother. The rich man takes her to have fun in several nightclubs and then to her apartment. He first ignores the woman while she gorges herself with a big meal. She seduces him, and he approaches her excitedly.

A visionary and hallucinatory nightmare, without dialogue, during a night of a lonely woman in Los Angeles. Between horror, film noir and expressionist film, initially conceived as a short film by Parker based on a dream told him by his secretary, Barrett, who also became the film's interpreter. The film was blocked by the New York State Film Board before being released in theaters in 1955. Later Jack H. Harris bought it and created a new version, with a different cut of editing, also adding a voiceover. and changing the title. This is the original version.

Without dialogue

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The Lobster (2015)

In a near-future dystopian society, single individuals are arrested and taken to a hotel where they have 45 days to find a partner. If they fail, they are surgically transformed into an animal of their choosing and released into the wild. David, a recently divorced man, attempts to navigate the hotel’s absurd rules before escaping to join a group of loners living in the woods, only to find their restrictions just as oppressive.

Yorgos Lanthimos delivers a deadpan satire on social conformity and the mechanical nature of modern romance. The film critiques the psychological pressure to fit into arbitrary societal boxes, suggesting that both forced partnership and forced isolation are equally tyrannical. By reducing complex human bonds to superficial traits, the narrative exposes the absurdity of social engineering and the erasure of individual desire.

Under the Skin (2013)

An extraterrestrial entity inhabiting the body of a seductive woman drives through Scotland, luring lonely men into a surreal, liquid abyss where they are consumed. As she continues her predatory mission, her interactions with humans spark an unexpected evolution. She begins to experience curiosity, empathy, and vulnerability, leading her to question her purpose and her own alien identity.

Jonathan Glazer’s sci-fi masterpiece uses an alien perspective to deconstruct the human experience through a cold, clinical lens. By employing hidden cameras and non-professional actors, the film captures the reality of the human world as if through a microscope. It is a visually hypnotic and unsettling work that explores the profound disconnect between the physical body and the internal consciousness.

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Gilderoy, a timid British sound engineer, travels to Italy in the 1970s to work on the post-production of a violent “giallo” horror film. Immersed in a hostile environment, he is tasked with creating gruesome sound effects for torture scenes he never sees on screen. Over time, the boundary between his work and reality dissolves, dragging him into a fragmented psychological nightmare.

Peter Strickland’s film is a sophisticated study of how sensory inputs, particularly sound, can manipulate the mind and trigger repressed anxieties. The dissociation between the horrific audio and the unseen images mirrors Gilderoy’s own internal breakdown. The recording studio becomes a literal arena for his psyche, where his inability to integrate the darkness of his work leads to a total loss of self.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

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Horror, fantasy, by Robert Wiene, Germany, 1920.
The symbolic film of cinematic expressionism. Francis tells a story to a man: in 1830, in a small town, a guy named Caligari, plays the barker at the fair to present the attraction of him, a sleepwalker that he holds under hypnosis in a coffin. The doctor argues that the sleepwalker is able to know the past and predict the future. Unreal atmospheres and deformed sets, stylized acting, split personality, confusion between dream and reality.

Food for thought
Personality from the Greek person means mask. Person comes from the word personality. Individuality is a gift of existence, personality is imposed by society. Personality follows the flock of sheep, individuality is a lion moving on its own. Until you let go of your personality you won't be able to find your individuality.

LANGUAGE: German
SUBTITLES: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese

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Melancholia (2011)

Justine struggles with severe depression during her catastrophic wedding reception, while a rogue planet named Melancholia approaches Earth. As the threat of total annihilation becomes certain, the roles of Justine and her rational sister Claire are reversed. Claire collapses into panic, while Justine finds a strange, nihilistic clarity and calm, welcoming the apocalypse as a reflection of her internal state.

Lars von Trier uses the literal end of the world as a powerful metaphor for the experience of clinical depression. The film explores the concept of “depressive realism,” suggesting that those accustomed to despair may possess a clearer view of existential reality than those blinded by false optimism. It is a sumptuously visual representation of how a mental state can radically warp one’s perception of the universe.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010)

Set in a retro-futuristic 1983, a young woman with psychic abilities is held captive in the Arboria Institute by a deranged scientist. Her mind is subjected to experimental technology designed to induce altered states of consciousness and trance. The scientist’s obsession with achieving a higher level of being through chemical and technological means leads to a hallucinatory and dangerous breakdown.

Panos Cosmatos creates a “trance film” characterized by saturated colors and a slow, meditative pace designed to mimic an altered state. The Institute serves as a metaphor for failed New Age utopias and therapies that seek to suppress the unconscious rather than integrate it. It is a surreal journey into the dark side of the search for transcendence, where enlightenment is replaced by a psychological prison.

Shutter Island (2010)

U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels arrives at a remote hospital for the criminally insane to investigate the disappearance of a patient. As a massive storm cuts the island off from the mainland, Teddy is plagued by hallucinations and memories of his past. He soon begins to suspect that the doctors are conducting unethical experiments, only to uncover a much deeper truth about his own identity.

Martin Scorsese crafts a dense psychological thriller that explores the mechanisms of denial and repressed guilt. The film’s atmospheric dread and unreliable narration serve to illustrate the subconscious as a fortress guarding an unbearable truth. It is a profound study in cinematic psychoanalysis, showing how the mind constructs elaborate delusions to survive a traumatic reality it cannot accept.

Inception (2010)

Dominick Cobb is a skilled thief who specializes in “extraction”—stealing secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state. He is offered a chance to have his criminal record erased if he can perform “inception”: planting an idea in a target’s mind. To do this, he must lead his team through multiple, nested layers of shared dreams where time dilates and the environment is governed by the target’s mind.

Christopher Nolan masterfully uses the architecture of dreams as a narrative framework to explore themes of memory, regret, and the malleability of reality. The film utilizes the collective unconscious as a literal battleground where personal demons manifest as physical threats. It challenges the viewer to discern between the constructed world of the dream and the waking world, questioning the very nature of free will.

The conquest of the Pole

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Short film, adventure, fantasy, adventure, by Georges Méliès, France, 1912.
Perhaps the best film made by Méliès, full of extravagant special effects. Professor Maboul, played by steeso Méliès and six other people try to reach the North Pole. While the man uses a plane and crosses the constellations, the others travel by car. Once they reach the Pole they will encounter a terrible and gigantic ice monster.

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Enter the Void (2009)

After being killed in a police raid in Tokyo, an American drug dealer named Oscar experiences an out-of-body journey. His spirit floats above the city, observing his grieving sister and reliving traumatic childhood memories while moving toward reincarnation. Guided by the principles of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, his soul navigates a neon-drenched, psychedelic landscape of memory and sensation.

Gaspar Noé utilizes a radical first-person perspective and strobing visuals to simulate a subjective psychedelic experience. The film is more than a sensory experiment; it is a “melodramma psichedelico” that explores how trauma shapes the psyche and desire. Oscar’s journey represents a desperate search for connection and a return to a pre-traumatic state, reflecting the cyclical nature of psychological patterns.

Antichrist (2009)

Grieving the loss of their young son, a couple retreats to a cabin in the woods known as “Eden.” The husband, a therapist, attempts to treat his wife’s profound despair with exposure therapy, but their stay in the wilderness triggers a horrific psychological regression. They find themselves consumed by violence, internalized misogyny, and primordial terrors as nature itself begins to reflect their inner turmoil.

Lars von Trier’s controversial work is a brutal descent into the abyss of guilt and the failure of rationality. Nature is presented as an external manifestation of the tormented human psyche—a place where “chaos reigns.” The film utilizes disturbing symbolism to explore themes of original sin and the mind’s regression into a savage, primordial state when faced with extreme emotional pain.

Dogtooth (2009)

Three adult siblings are kept in complete isolation within their parents’ gated estate, having never been allowed to see the world outside. The parents have constructed a distorted reality for them, teaching them false definitions for words and imposing a rigid system of bizarre rules. This equilibrium is shattered when an outsider is brought in to satisfy the son’s sexual needs, leading to a violent awakening.

Yorgos Lanthimos presents a chilling allegory of psychological control and the construction of reality. The family functions as a totalitarian microcosm where language is weaponized to manipulate perception and restrict individual freedom. The film’s static, symmetrical cinematography emphasizes the claustrophobia of this artificial world, raising profound questions about education, power, and the necessity of rebellion to discover the self.

Inland Empire (2006)

An actress named Nikki Grace takes a role in a new film production that is rumored to be cursed, a remake of a Polish film that ended in tragedy. As she becomes increasingly immersed in her character, the boundaries between her life, the film’s plot, and a surreal underworld begin to collapse. She finds herself moving through fragmented realities, haunted by a group of anthropomorphic rabbits and her own shifting identities.

David Lynch’s most abstract and experimental work abandons traditional narrative to fully immerse the viewer in the disorienting logic of the unconscious. Shot on low-resolution digital video, the film creates a claustrophobic and nightmarish atmosphere where time and space are fluid. It serves as a profound meditation on the fractured nature of the human psyche and the terror of losing one’s grip on a stable reality.

Paprika (2006)

In the near future, a device called the DC Mini allows therapists to enter and record their patients’ dreams. When the technology is stolen by a “dream terrorist,” the boundaries between dreams and waking life begin to dissolve, causing a chaotic parade of subconscious imagery to invade the real world. Dr. Atsuko Chiba and her dream-world alter ego, Paprika, must stop the psychic meltdown before reality is permanently overwritten.

Satoshi Kon’s animated masterpiece is a celebration of the power of the imagination and the collective unconscious. The film explores the idea that dreams can be hacked and manipulated, creating a spectacular visual chaos that would be impossible in live-action cinema. It also serves as a meta-cinematic reflection on how film editing and dream logic share the same essential grammar of transformation and association.

The Dream of Homer

Now Available

Documentary, by Emiliano Aiello, Italy, 2018.
What makes those who live without seeing dream? What kind of images and figures populate your imagination and dreams? The Dream of Homer is a documentary on the dreams of Rosa, Domenico, Gabriel, Daniela and Fabio: blind from birth, united by their condition and the habit of narrating their dreams to a tape recorder, an oral diary that each of them records every morning after getting out of bed.

LANGUAGE: italian
SUBTITLES: English

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The Science of Sleep (2006)

Stéphane is a creative young man who struggles with a mind that constantly blurs the line between his whimsical dreams and his mundane reality. He falls in love with his neighbor, Stéphanie, but his inability to distinguish between the two worlds leads to social awkwardness and emotional confusion. His internal life is visualized through a “television studio” made of cardboard and household objects.

Michel Gondry employs a playful, handmade aesthetic to represent the permeable boundaries of the conscious mind. The film is an insightful exploration of the creative and sometimes chaotic nature of the unconscious, where the lines between the tangible and the imagined are fluid. It portrays the struggle to ground oneself in reality when the internal dream world offers a far more seductive and imaginative alternative.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

After a painful breakup, Joel discovers that his ex-girlfriend Clementine has undergone a psychiatric procedure to have all memories of him erased from her mind. In a fit of desperation, he decides to undergo the same process. However, as his memories begin to disappear, he realizes he still loves her and attempts to hide her within the deeper, unrelated folds of his subconscious to save her from being forgotten.

Michel Gondry’s film visualizes the fragmented and emotionally charged landscape of memory and the unconscious. The non-linear structure and innovative visual effects mirror the chaotic process of a mind attempting to preserve its most significant experiences. It raises profound questions about the nature of identity and the idea that our pain and our memories are essential to who we are as human beings.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

A blonde aspiring actress named Betty arrives in Los Angeles and discovers an amnesiac woman hiding in her aunt’s apartment. As they attempt to uncover the stranger’s identity, they are drawn into a dreamlike mystery that shifts between the seductive allure of Hollywood and a dark, disturbing underworld. Mid-way through, the narrative fractures, suggesting that what we have seen may be a guilt-ridden fantasy masking a tragic reality.

David Lynch utilizes a masterful blend of atmosphere and unsettling imagery to mirror the fluid and often illogical nature of dreams. The film delves into the protagonist’s subconscious desires and the constructed nature of the self, using Hollywood as a backdrop for a psychological nightmare. It remains a definitive contemporary text on cinematic surrealism, challenging the audience to navigate a landscape where truth is hidden behind a series of masks.

Donnie Darko (2001)

Donnie is a troubled teenager who is lured out of his house by a figure in a grotesque rabbit suit named Frank, who tells him the world will end in 28 days. Shortly after, a jet engine crashes into his bedroom. Donnie begins to experience a series of surreal events involving time travel and apocalyptic visions, leading him to question his own sanity and the nature of destiny.

Richard Kelly’s cult classic explores the adolescent subconscious through a blend of science fiction and psychological horror. The film utilizes Freudian motifs of id-driven impulses and existential dread to represent the internal turmoil of growing up. Its enigmatic structure and use of parallel universes serve as visual metaphors for the fragmented and often terrifying process of mental and emotional development.

The Cell (2000)

A child therapist uses an experimental virtual reality technology to enter the mind of a comatose serial killer in a desperate attempt to find his latest victim. Inside, she encounters a nightmarish landscape of archetypal horrors and sadistic fantasies that reflect the killer’s childhood trauma and his fractured, monstrous psyche.

Tarsem Singh creates a visually opulent journey into the “abyssal” depths of the human mind. The film utilizes surreal tableaux and baroque aesthetics to transform the subconscious into a tangible, if terrifying, physical realm. By drawing from Jungian shadows and mythological imagery, it showcases cinema’s unique power to externalize internal psychological states and the dark undercurrents of the human soul.

Testament of Orpheus

Now Available

Drama film, by Jean Cocteu, France, 1960.
In his latest film, the legendary Jean Cocteau is a poet who travels through time in search of enlightenment. In a mysterious wasteland, he meets lost souls that result in his death and resurrection. With an exceptional cast including Pablo Picasso, Jean-Pierre Leáud, Lucia Bosè, Yul Brynner, Brigitte Bardot, Testament of Orpheus closes Cocteau's extraordinary research on the relationship between art and life.

LANGUAGE: french
SUBTITLES: english, italian

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Lost Highway (1997)

A jazz saxophonist, Fred Madison, begins receiving anonymous videotapes of himself and his wife inside their home. After being convicted of her murder, Fred inexplicably transforms into a young mechanic named Pete Dayton while in his prison cell. Pete begins a new life and an affair with a woman who looks exactly like Fred’s dead wife, but the two realities eventually begin to collide in a terrifying loop.

David Lynch employs a non-linear narrative and dream logic to explore the concept of a “psychogenic fugue”—a dissociative state where the mind creates a new identity to escape a traumatic reality. The film’s abstract structure and ambiguous symbolism directly mirror the elusive and fragmented nature of unconscious thought. It is a haunting meditation on memory, guilt, and the mind’s ability to reinvent itself to avoid a crushing truth.

Pi (1998)

Max Cohen is a paranoid mathematical genius who believes that everything in nature can be understood through numbers. Using a supercomputer in his apartment, he searches for a mathematical pattern in the stock market, eventually discovering a 216-digit number that may be a divine code. His obsession draws the attention of both a powerful Wall Street firm and a group of Kabbalists, driving him toward a mental collapse.

Darren Aronofsky’s low-budget debut is a psychological thriller that explores the thin line between genius and insanity. The grainy, high-contrast black-and-white photography immerses the viewer in Max’s obsessive and fractured mind. His hallucinations and headaches serve as physical manifestations of the conflict between his search for rational order and the chaotic, unknowable nature of the universe.

Naked Lunch (1991)

Bill Lee is an exterminator who is addicted to his own bug powder. After accidentally killing his wife, he flees to a surreal landscape called “Interzone,” where he is tasked by giant, talking insects to write reports on a typewriter that transforms into a living creature. Reality dissolves into a paranoid nightmare of drug-induced hallucinations, espionage, and repressed sexual desire.

David Cronenberg merges the life of author William S. Burroughs with his “unfilmable” novel to explore the psychology of addiction and the creative process. The film represents Interzone as a projection of Lee’s unconscious mind, where guilt and paranoia take on grotesque, organic forms. It is a radical depiction of how internal states can warp the perception of reality, framing the act of writing as a submission to chaotic, uncontrollable forces.

Jacob’s Ladder (1990)

Jacob Singer is a Vietnam veteran living in New York who is plagued by fragmented flashbacks and demonic visions. As his reality begins to crumble, he finds himself trapped in a psychological labyrinth where he cannot distinguish between his current life, his memories of the war, and terrifying hallucinations of monsters and purgatory. He must confront his unresolved trauma to understand the nature of his existence.

Adrian Lyne’s film is a powerful representation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), where trauma acts as an active force warping the perception of the present. The non-linear structure and unsettling imagery reflect the mental state of a person whose psyche is fractured by grief and guilt. The film masterfully maintains ambiguity, leaving the viewer unsure if Jacob is experiencing a mental breakdown or a spiritual transition on the border of life and death.

Santa Sangre (1989)

Fenix is a young man who was traumatized as a child by the violent mutilation of his mother in a circus. After spending years in a psychiatric hospital, he escapes to rejoin his armless mother, acting as her “arms” while she forces him to commit a series of murders. The film follows his descent into madness as he struggles to free himself from the dark undercurrents of his family history.

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film is a unique blend of surrealism, horror, and melodrama that explores the weight of ancestral trauma. Fenix’s fractured psychological state is vividly reflected in the film’s unsettling and bizarre imagery. It serves as an exploration of the distorted content of the unconscious, where repressed memories and toxic family bonds manifest as a literal and bloody nightmare.

Carnival of souls

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Horror, by Herk Harvey, United States, 1962.
Mary Henry emerges unscathed from a car accident that killed her two companions, and sets off on a strange adventure in Salt Lake City, where she finds herself drawn to a dilapidated lakeside pavilion and haunted by a ghostly figure (played by same director). A low-budget ($ 30,000) horror masterpiece that went unnoticed at the time of its release, it has become a cult film in the United States since the late 1980s. Sounds and images that have inspired directors such as George Romero and David Lynch (the masked man from "Lost Roads").

LANGUAGE: english
SUBTITLES: italian

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Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

A Japanese salaryman accidentally kills a “metal fetishist” and soon begins to undergo an agonizing physical transformation. Shards of metal erupt from his skin, and his body contorts into a monstrous hybrid of flesh and industrial rottami. The film culminates in a violent, high-speed confrontation between the man and his resurrected enemy in the post-industrial landscape of Tokyo.

Shinya Tsukamoto’s cyberpunk masterpiece is a sensory assault that visualizes the collision between humanity and technology. The metallic transformation serves as a metaphor for the salaryman’s repressed rage and sexual anxiety, which are violently released as his social facade is destroyed. The “Iron Man” is the protagonist’s id made manifest—a terrifying liberation of the raw, violent energy suppressed by civilized life.

Alice (1988)

Jan Švankmajer’s adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is a stop-motion surrealist work that avoids all sanitized depictions of childhood. Told from a young girl’s perspective, her journey down the rabbit hole leads to a tactile and unsettling world filled with taxidermied animals, bones, and creatures made of everyday objects, reflecting the bizarre and often cruel logic of the child’s imagination.

This is a landscape of the childhood unconscious, where the boundary between the animate and the inanimate is fluid. Švankmajer uses animation to bring objects to life in a way that captures how children perceive the world as a place of both wonder and terror. The film celebrates the untamed nature of the imagination, showing that a child’s dreams are often rooted in a tactile, visceral reality.

Dreamscape (1984)

A young psychic is recruited by a secret government project that uses a technology to allow people to enter and participate in others’ dreams. While initially used for therapeutic purposes, he discovers a plot to use the device to assassinate the President by killing him within a nightmare, leading to a high-stakes psychic battle inside the unconscious mind.

Joseph Ruben’s thriller literalizes dream invasion as a form of subconscious warfare, exploring the vulnerability of the mind to external manipulation. Through its use of practical effects and political allegory, the film anticipates many of the tropes used in later “mind-heist” films. It probes the ethical frontiers of psychic intrusion, representing the unconscious as a dangerous battleground for both personal and societal demons.

Videodrome (1983)

Max Renn, the head of a sleazy cable TV station, discovers a pirate signal called “Videodrome” that broadcasts scenes of extreme torture and murder. As he investigates its origin, he becomes embroiled in a conspiracy involving hallucinogenic brain tumors and a new philosophy called “the New Flesh.” His body begins to mutate, developing a slot in his stomach for videocassettes as reality and media fantasy merge.

David Cronenberg’s prophetic film explores the relationship between mass media, reality, and the human body. The narrative suggests that the media we consume acts as an active biological agent that physically reshapes our perception and our flesh. It is a profound warning about the neurological and physiological effects of the screen, asserting that the medium is not just the message, but a mutagen that alters human evolution.

Altered States (1980)

Eddie Jessup is an obsessed scientist who uses sensory deprivation tanks and powerful hallucinogenic drugs to study altered states of consciousness. His experiments lead him to physically and mentally regress—first to a state of primitive man and then to pure, primordial energy. This terrifying exploration pushes the boundaries between scientific inquiry, mysticism, and the collective memory of the human race.

Directed by Ken Russell, this film delves into the Jungian concept of the collective unconscious, portraying Jessup’s regressions as actual journeys through humanity’s genetic history. The sensory deprivation acts as a catalyst to unlock primordial memories buried in the psyche. The film uses a psychedelic visual language and body horror to represent the idea that our individual identity is merely a thin layer over an abyss of shared biological history.

Altin in the City

Now Available

Drama, thriller, by Fabio Del Greco, Italy 2017.
Altin, aspiring Albanian writer arrived in Italy aboard a large ferry in the 90‘s, works in a butcher shop when he’s selected to audition for a reality of writers and finally sees a chance to be successful with his book “the journey of Ismail.” Unfortunately, this is the begin of the adventures which will lead him to learn about revenge, loneliness and extreme poverty, to the dark side of wealth and success.

The theme of Altin in the City should not lead to the assumption that it is merely the story of a young immigrant trying to integrate. In reality, it is a tale where greed, thirst for power and success, cynicism, and ambition intertwine, creating a sort of modern-day Faust and a new "pact with the devil" belonging to the 22nd century, which we could summarize as: show business. The reality show becomes the Mecca, the keystone, and the springboard for those who wish to achieve success without effort. Del Greco presents this world with subtle irony, characterized by kitsch nuances and parodic tones. However, success without effort comes at a price: Altin has sold his soul to the devil and, from being an easy prey of television showbiz, will soon become a victim of himself.

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

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Stalker (1979)

In an undefined future, a guide known as a “Stalker” leads two clients—a cynical Writer and a pragmatic Professor—through the “Zone,” a mysterious, forbidden area where the laws of physics are suspended. At the center of the Zone is a room said to grant the innermost desires of those who enter. The journey is a spiritual and psychological ordeal that tests the characters’ faith and their understanding of their own true needs.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Zone” is a landscape of the soul that reacts to the internal states of those who traverse it. The Room does not grant what the characters ask for, but what they truly desire in the deepest depths of their unconscious, forcing them to confront the possibility that they do not know themselves. The film is a profound meditation on the unknowable nature of human desire, suggesting that the most important journey is the one within one’s own psyche.

Solaris (1972)

Psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to a space station orbiting the mysterious planet Solaris to investigate the psychological collapse of the crew. He discovers that the planet is a sentient entity capable of materializing the repressed memories and guilt of the humans aboard. Soon, Kris is visited by a replica of his deceased wife, Hari, forcing him to confront his grief and his past failures in the isolation of deep space.

Andrei Tarkovsky uses science fiction as a framework to explore the overwhelming power of the unconscious to shape reality. The planet acts as a mirror, bringing forth the characters’ repressed emotions and desires, effectively blurring the lines between objective reality and subjective inner states. The film is a profound meditation on memory, loss, and the impossibility of escaping one’s own mind, even at the edge of the cosmos.

The Holy Mountain (1973)

A thief resembling Christ is guided by an Alchemist on a journey to the Holy Mountain to obtain the secret of immortality. Along with seven powerful figures who represent the planets and various societal vices, they undergo a series of bizarre, surreal rituals intended to strip away their egos and transcend material existence. The journey culminates in a shocking revelation that challenges the very nature of the cinematic illusion.

Alejandro Jodorowsky conceived this film as a visual alchemical ritual, an attempt to use cinema to induce a psychological transformation in the viewer. The narrative draws on the symbolism of tarot and Eastern philosophies to bypass the rational mind and speak directly to the collective unconscious. The protagonists’ journey serves as a metaphor for Jungian individuation—a path of integrating the Shadow and overcoming social conditioning to reach a higher Self.

El Topo (1970)

A mysterious black-clad gunfighter named El Topo travels through a surreal desert with his naked son. After abandoning the child, he embarks on a quest to defeat four master gunfighters to prove his spiritual and physical supremacy. Betrayed and left for dead, he is reborn as a holy fool and attempts to save a community of deformed outcasts by digging a tunnel from their cave to the outside world.

Jodorowsky’s “Acid Western” uses the iconography of the American frontier to deliver a brutal surrealist allegory of spiritual transformation. The film’s bipartite structure mirrors the transition from the Old Testament—a vengeful god seeking dominance through violence—to the New Testament—a figure of compassion and sacrifice. It is a spiritual odyssey that explores the destruction of the ego and the painful, transgressive path toward redemption.

Persona (1966)

Elisabet Vogler, a successful stage actress, suddenly falls mute during a performance and refuses to speak again. She is sent to an isolated island villa to recover, cared for by a young nurse named Alma. In the silence and isolation, the identities of the two women begin to merge and blur, leading to a profound and disturbing exploration of the self and the social masks we wear.

Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece structures the film itself to reflect a psychological breakdown. The title refers to the Jungian concept of the “persona,” the mask one wears for the world. Elisabet’s mutism is a radical rejection of this mask, which in turn forces Alma to confront the fragility of her own identity. The famous shot of their overlapping faces symbolizes the dissolution of the boundary between the ego and the shadow in an absolute state of human disconnection.

Repulsion (1965)

Carole Ledoux is a shy, beautiful manicurist living in London with her sister, suffering from a pathological repulsion toward men and sexual intimacy. When her sister leaves for a vacation, Carole’s forced isolation triggers a rapid and terrifying descent into a psychotic nightmare. Her apartment becomes a hellish landscape populated by surreal hallucinations and violent impulses that reflect her fractured mental state.

Roman Polanski transforms the domestic space into a direct projection of the protagonist’s unconscious anxieties. The cracking walls and reaching hands symbolize the disintegration of Carole’s conscious mind and the emergence of deeply repressed fears. The film’s oppressive atmosphere and subjective perspective provide a claustrophobic portrayal of madness, showing how isolation can allow the mind’s internal horrors to consume external reality.

8 ½ (1963)

Guido Anselmi is a famous director struggling with a creative and personal crisis as he attempts to start his next film. Retreating to a spa to escape the pressure, he is besieged by memories, dreams, and fantasies of the women in his life. The film masterfully blends his waking reality with a oneiric world, exploring the chaos of the creative process and the artist’s internal struggles.

Deeply influenced by Jungian psychoanalysis, Federico Fellini uses a stream-of-consciousness narrative to represent Guido’s engagement with his own archetypes. The various female figures in his dreams embody the “Anima”—the representation of the feminine unconscious in the male psyche. The film moves through free association, mirroring an analysis session or a dream, as Guido attempts to reconcile his desires with his guilt and find a way to create once more.

Last Year at Marienbad (1961)

In a luxurious, labyrinthine baroque hotel, a man approaches a woman, insisting that they met and had an affair the previous year at the same location. The woman claims to remember nothing. The film is a hypnotic and mysterious exploration of memory, perception, and the subjective nature of reality, where the past, the present, and imagination merge into a timeless mental architecture.

Alain Resnais presents reality as a malleable mental construct rather than an objective truth. The hotel itself, with its endless corridors and geometric gardens, functions as a metaphor for the human mind—a labyrinth of potential memories and forgotten paths. The viewer is placed in the same position as the woman, forced to navigate a stream of contradictory images and statements, never able to distinguish authentic memory from imposed fantasy.

Wild Strawberries (1957)

Aging Professor Isak Borg travels by car to receive an honorary degree, accompanied by his daughter-in-law. Along the way, he is plagued by vivid dreams and memories of his past that force him to confront his emotional coldness and regrets. This introspective journey allows him to re-examine his life and his failed relationships, leading to a late-life reconciliation with himself before his death.

Ingmar Bergman masterfully uses dream sequences as a narrative device to reveal the protagonist’s internal landscape. These scenes are seamlessly woven into the physical journey, representing the emotional baggage and unconscious desires the professor has carried throughout his life. The film is a poignant exploration of the subconscious, showing how memory and dreams can act as catalysts for spiritual awakening and psychological integration.

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)

A woman in her home experiences a cyclical, dreamlike narrative where everyday objects—a key, a knife, a flower—become charged with symbolic menace. As the dream progresses, the boundaries between the dreamer and the dreamed dissolve, and the protagonist encounters multiple versions of herself, transforming her domestic space into a paranoid exploration of identity and death.

Maya Deren’s film is a cornerstone of American experimental cinema and an archetypal example of the “trance film.” The structure of repetition and variation mirrors the obsessive and associative nature of the unconscious. The house becomes a map of the protagonist’s psyche, with each room reflecting a different facet of her inner anxieties. The presence of multiple doubles visualizes a fractured identity that can no longer contain its own internal pressures.

L’Age d’Or (1930)

This Surrealist work presents a series of vignettes depicting a man and a woman’s frustrating and often violent attempt to fulfill their erotic love. Their passion is constantly interrupted and suppressed by the rigid constraints and hypocrisies of bourgeois society and religious institutions. The film utilizes blasphemous imagery and shocking sequences to represent the struggle between primal human drives and social repression.

A second collaboration between Buñuel and Dalí, the film directly confronts the Freudian concept of the “id” and the societal forces that seek to control it. By challenging the audience’s expectations of narrative progression and social decorum, it aims to provoke a visceral reaction. It exposes the unacknowledged desires that drive human behavior, using the medium of film to launch a direct attack on the moral and social order of the era.

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

This silent, short film dispenses with conventional plot to present a series of disconnected, dreamlike images born directly from the artists’ dreams. Iconic sequences include an eye being sliced with a razor, ants crawling from a hand, and a man dragging pianos laden with dead donkeys. The work follows only the logic of the subconscious, rejecting any rational explanation to create a purely visceral impact.

Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí created this foundational Surrealist text as a violent attack on bourgeois complacency and rational logic. The famous opening scene serves as a meta-cinematic declaration: it “cuts” through the conventional way of seeing to force the viewer into a new, psychoanalytic perception. Every image acts as an uncensored manifestation of the id, establishing the principle that in cinema, the subjective experience of the unconscious can prevail over linear storytelling.