Hard Truths - an Animus film podcast

Elena and Manuela try on a looser podcasting style in Bologna, at Il Cinema Ritrovato. Among the topics they cover are: Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms , libraries, file sharing, budding cinephiles, Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid , F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans , and much more. Hard Truths is an ⁠⁠Animus⁠⁠ film podcast. Every other week, Animus founder and editor Ele...

As Elena’s season  Finding Your Way: The Films of Peter Weir was winding down at the BFI Southbank in London, she joined Manuela to talk some more about the cinema of this fascinating Australian filmmaker, from Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World , to Fearless , Witness to Gallipoli , Dead Poets Society to The Truman Show and more.  Hard Truths is an ⁠⁠Animus⁠⁠ film podcast. Every othe...

French filmmaker Maurice Pialat initially wanted to be a painter. He did not fulfil that dream, and it’s hard not to trace at least part of his legendary anger and bitterness back to this early frustration. Centred on protagonists who can be brutal with one another as they cope with violent waves of emotion, his films are nevertheless marked by undeniable beauty and heartbreaking gentleness. They...

Is love real, or a socially accepted form of delusion? Is there such a thing as chemistry, or are random encounters only perceived as meaningful connections through the lens of expectation and memory? Is romance a choice, or written in the unalterable script of our destiny? As Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) turns 30, Elena and Manuela revisit the Before Trilogy, completed by Before Suns...

Gleefully playing with established tropes, the three films Elena and Manuela discuss in this new episode of Hard Truths toe the line between comedy and terror, irony and sincerity, fiction and reality: early true crime spoof Man Bites Dog (Rémy Belvaux and André Bonzel, 1992), meta franchise sequel Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), and French “slasher” High Tension (Alexandre Aja, 2003).   Hard T...

It’s only a matter of time before Joachim Trier wins a Best Picture Oscar. In this new episode of Hard Truths, Elena and Manuela damn the Norwegian director with faint praise but also give him his flowers as they discuss three of his best known films: Oslo, August 31st (2011), The Worst Person in the World (2021), and his latest, Sentimental Value (2025).  Hard Truths is an ⁠⁠Animus⁠⁠ film podcast...

What unites the three apparently very different films of this 10th, Jukebox episode of Hard Truths? In Sidney Lumet’s The Offence (1972), Sean Connery plays a detective-sergeant who has seen too much. Milton Moses Ginsberg’s underseen, Rip Torn-starring arthouse gem Coming Apart (1969) charts the psychological unravelling of a New York psychiatrist who takes to recording his clients’ appointments...

From the ultraviolence of Raw (2016) to the over-the-top silliness of Palme d’Or-winner Titane (2021) and the emo intensity of Alpha (2025): the cinema of French director Julia Ducournau is hard to ignore. With Alpha now playing in French cinemas, Elena and Manuela gather in London to talk about the ideas lurking behind these films’ infamous shock value. Hard Truths is an ⁠⁠Animus⁠⁠ film podcast....

With just four feature films, American filmmaker Ari Aster has established himself as one of the foremost voices of our phone-addicted, psychically damaged, paranoid generation. As his 2020-set neo-western Eddington comes out in cinemas this summer, Elena and Manuela—recording together in the rich soundscape of Elena’s garden—discuss the film (without any spoilers) in light of Aster’s previous wor...

Two massive stars fight for relevance in two of this summer’s blockbusters: Brad Pitt in Joseph Kosinski’s F1 , and Tom Cruise in Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning . Both have things to hide, and things to prove. In this episode of Hard Truths, Elena and Manuela discuss the cinematic merits, perverse pleasures, and unavoidable offense of these two morally compromise...

Recording together in the same room for the first time in Hard Truths history, Elena and Manuela discuss the wonders of Il Cinema Ritrovato directly from Bologna, Italy, where the annual repertory cinema festival organised by Cineteca di Bologna takes place. Talking about some of the prints and restorations playing there this year, they identify a timeless theme running through many of the films t...

In LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (1949), a young woman spends the better part of her life fantasising about a man who barely knows of her existence. It is difficult to imagine the pleasure-seeking characters from LA RONDE (1950) or LE PLAISIR (1952) ever adopting such an impractical view of romance. As for the hedonists of THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE… (1953), their real problems begin when they accid...

The sun of June can be oppressive in its own way. For the fourth year in a row, the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles has given local cinephiles a refuge from the mirth of spring-summer months with Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair — a week-long season of soul-crushing and gruelling masterpieces. In this fourth episode of Hard Truths, Elena and Manuela discuss three films playing in the first ever...

This third episode of Hard Truths, about Ryan Coogler 's Sinners , is a lot less about twins than we expected — but that's only because the film is so rich. Elena and Manuela talk about Coogler's far-reaching vision for the possibilities of IMAX and cinema in general, his handling of tone and genre, and much more. Hard Truths is an Animus film podcast. Every other week, Animus founder...

In this second episode of Hard Truths, Elena and Manuela discuss three fantastic, very different films, all of them westerns: FORTY GUNS (Sam Fuller, 1957), THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (John Ford, 1962), and RIDE LONESOME (Budd Boetticher, 1959). They recently screened in Paris as part of the Cinémathèque Française season “Le Western, en 25 films indispensables”, which ran from 9 to 27 April....

In the first episode of Hard Truths, we come up with the name of the podcast on the spot, and go on to discuss two differently delightful French films, both of which stand out from the usual French output for being set in the countryside: Alain Guiraudie’s MISERICORDIA, and Louise Courvoisier’s HOLY COW. Both films premiered at the 2024 edition of the Cannes Film Festival: MISERICORDIA in Cannes P...