Perfect Days (2023): in which communing not with people but with each moment as it comes cannot divest us of our grief, but it most assuredly makes space for joy. Now is now, whether we’re running from a past life or seeking a new one through komorebi, cassettes, and a job well done.

‘Antichrist’ (2009): in which the evil we see in the world turns out to be our own. The three beggars, the lovers, the fallen child. Nature, Satan, me. If ever there was a marriage not to emulate, it’s this rampage of unwatchable sexual violence. And yet — it’s paired with so much beauty.

‘The Menu’ (2022): in which the audience finds some comfort in metaphorical class war, and celebrates with a double cheeseburger (and, for some reason, crinkle-cut fries), though our eyes be bigger than our stomachs. There is still joy to be found in this world.

‘Marketa Lazarová’ (1967): in which women fall in love despite the best efforts of men (and the new religion is the same as the old religion). Awash in snow blindness, populated by wolves, no medieval epic has ever been so visually or sonically exquisite.

‘Janet Planet’ (2023): in which a small human learns to find her own orbit, and her mother learns to leave the patterns that aren’t serving her. Connections and disconnection, malls and the magic of summer — even hippies must navigate capitalism, even in 1991.

‘I Saw the TV Glow’ (2024): in which home is found not in kinship, a building, or a body, but in friends who remain strangers, crackling VHS tapes, memories that are richer than what they represent. Kinda boring, kinda rips your heart out. For anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider. (For everyone.)

‘At Eternity’s Gate’ (2018): in which 62-year-old Willem Dafoe plays Vincent van Gogh, who died at 37, and the camera wobbles its way into an approximation of van Gogh’s swirling perspective on the world, equal parts gold and tungsten.