Watch Next

Picture this: fresh banana chips being fried in crackling oil, dosa batter spread thin on a hot pan in perfect circular motions, green mangoes, peeled, diced and mixed with spices for pickling. Is your plan white toast looking a little boring? Jeo Baby’s The Great Indian Kitchen lures us in with beautiful shots of home cooking and just when we are getting hungry we are trapped in the relentless be...

Tackling themes of colonialism, NAFTA, Catholic religious imagery, time, and tension between small-scale artisanship and industrial capitalism, we dive deep with Dr. Lydia CdeBaca into Guillermo Del Toro's debut film Cronos (1992), a Mexican dark fantasy horror reimagining of the vampire. Works Discussed: Cronos (Guillermo Del Toro, 1992)

Get comfortable! Because in this week’s episode, we’re talking about romance and the 8,000 layers of In-yun that bring lovers together… and what happens when, in the face of destiny, you wonder: Is this person written into my destiny to stay? Or are they fated to leave? Are we meant for each other, or are we destined to walk away? We talk with Dr. Jennifer Smith about the patterns of Romance and t...

An asteroid has struck Earth, unleashing a catastrophic flood that sweeps away everything in its path. As the waters rise, you race toward higher ground. But, along the way, you encounter people looting abandoned apartments, a woman in labor, a child trapped in an elevator. And then you realize, your own child is missing. What do you do? Kim Byung-woo’s The Great Flood asks, how do we respond to o...

In Mati Diop’s documentary Dahomey , we hear the voice of the past—literally. Diop gives a voice to one of the 26 royal treasures returned to Benin as we follow its journey home. In just under 70 minutes, Dahomey turns a story about the return of stolen objects into a debate on what happens when pieces of a country’s history, memories, and identity have been taken away. This week, we’re talking wi...

Episode 8. Stories We Tell with Leanna Petronella Welcome back to Season 2! And we’re starting with a banger. Truths are revealed, and crafted, in Sarah Polley’s documentary Stories We Tell , as her search to learn more about her recently deceased mother turns into a search to uncover the identity of her biological father. With poet Leanna Petronella, we talk about family secrets, the craft of wri...

This film has everything! Beautiful costuming, gorgeous locations, amazing camera work, but also some very adult scenes … and a live octopus. So viewer and listener discretion is advised. This week, Associate Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, Dr. Jacqueline Avila joins us to explore the music and soundscape of the erotic thriller The Handmaiden (Park […]

This week I’ll trade you film talk for some book talk. Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondo, 1996) puts us in a cozy mood to reminisce and share origin stories. Antiquarian bookseller, and owner of Livra Books, Moctezuma Seth Gonzalez, talks about his quest to learn more about the people and objects around him, and […]

When authenticity is marketed like a brand and “reality” is performed for the camera, LSD 2 asks: what happens when we can’t trust what we see? Replicating the visual language of news broadcasts, reality TV, and social media feeds, Dibakar Banerjee’s LSD 2 drops us into a reality shaped by deepfakes, AI-generated images, and constant […]

Can we escape our fate? Why do we go back to a story we know well? In this episode of Watch Next, we revisit the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as depicted in Céline Sciama’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Professor of Classics Deborah Beck talks to us about our human failings: doubt, temptation, […]

From the streets of Mumbai to the royal courts of Hindustan, poetry has always found its voice. What do the rap battles of Gully Boy have in common with the royal qawwali mehfil in Mughal-e-Azam? In this episode of Watch Next, we explore the rhythm and rebellion of Gully Boy with the cohosts of the […]

From the rousing sounds that fuel resistance to the elegiac music that reminds us of our shared humanity, in this episode of Watch Next we take a closer look at the music in Battle of Algiers composed by Gillo Pontecorvo and Ennio Morricone. Even when all else is taken away, you still have your voice. […]

In this episode of Watch Next, we talk with Dr. Brittany Murray, Assistant Professor of French at the University of Tennessee, about the 2014 Bollywood film Queen. The film follows Rani, a 24-year-old homely girl who decides to go on her Paris honeymoon alone after her fiancé calls off the wedding at the last minute. […]