Collection
Reality, Identity, and Perception
Films about the nature of reality, memory, and human consciousness.
There is a particular kind of vertigo that comes from doubting the ground beneath your own thoughts — the suspicion that the world you inhabit might be a construction, a program, a stage set, or a story someone else is telling about you. Descartes wondered if an evil demon might be deceiving his senses; Plato imagined prisoners mistaking shadows for the whole of reality. This collection gathers films that inherit that same vertigo and dramatize it: a man discovers his entire life has been a television broadcast, a hacker learns the world is code, an amnesiac reconstructs his identity one Polaroid at a time, a philosophy student finds that becoming a monster clarifies rather than obscures what it means to be human. These are not comfortable films. They ask you to consider that memory is unreliable, that perception is a negotiation rather than a mirror, and that the self you take for granted might be assembled, borrowed, or staged. Watch them back to back and you may start eyeing your own certainties a little more warily.
Two young men attempt to prove they committed the perfect murder by hosting a dinner party for the family of a classmate they just strangled to death.
In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.
In a picture-perfect seaside town, an insurance salesman begins to realize that his entire existence may be staged and observed by a vast unseen audience as part of a long-running real-time reality TV show.
Set in the 22nd century, The Matrix tells the story of a computer hacker who joins a group of underground insurgents fighting the vast and powerful computers who now rule the earth.
Leonard Shelby is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife. The difficulty of locating his wife's killer, however, is compounded by the fact that he suffers from a rare, untreatable form of short-term memory loss. Although he can recall details of life before his accident, Leonard cannot remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, where he's going, or why.
Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life.
Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realises that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake.
A vampiric doctoral student tries to follow the philosophy of a nocturnal comrade and control her thirst for blood.
Spanning over one thousand years, and three parallel stories, The Fountain is a story of love, death, spirituality, and the fragility of our existence in this world.
No films in this genre.