For a marathon to work, you need a few films that people already love, at least one genuine discovery, and something that sparks a conversation at the end.
The 2010s were defined by a wave of filmmakers who understood that the best genre films work on multiple levels simultaneously.
Great romance films understand that love is most interesting before it's resolved. The tension, the almost, the not-yet â that's where the cinema is.
High schoolers Mitsuha and Taki are complete strangers living separate lives. But one night, they suddenly switch places. Mitsuha wakes up in Taki's body, and he in hers. This bizarre occurrence continues to happen randomly, and the two must adjust their lives around each other.
Shouya Ishida starts bullying the new girl in class, Shouko Nishimiya, because she is deaf. But as the teasing continues, the rest of the class starts to turn on Shouya for his lack of compassion. When they leave elementary school, Shouko and Shouya do not speak to each other again... until an older, wiser Shouya, tormented by his past behaviour, decides he must see Shouko once more. He wants to atone for his sins, but is it already too late...?
In Fujisawa, Sakuta Azusagawa is in his second year of high school. Blissful days with his girlfriend and upperclassman, Mai Sakurajima, are interrupted by the appearance of his first crush, Shoko Makinohara.
One hot summer day a little girl gets lost in an enchanted forest of the mountain god where spirits reside. A young boy appears before her, but she cannot touch him for fear of making him disappear. And so a wondrous adventure awaits...
After his classmate and crush is diagnosed with a pancreatic disease, an average high schooler sets out to make the most of her final days.
What makes romantic cinema great is the gap between what characters want to say and what they actually say. These films live in that gap.
Seventeen-year-old Stella spends most of her time in the hospital as a cystic fibrosis patient. Her life is full of routines, boundaries and self-control - all of which get put to the test when she meets Will, an impossibly charming teen who has the same illness. There's an instant flirtation, though restrictions dictate that they must maintain a safe distance between them. As their connection intensifies, so does the temptation to throw the rules out the window and embrace that attraction.
1930s Korea, in the period of Japanese occupation, a new girl, Sook-hee, is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress, Hideko, who lives a secluded life on a large countryside estate with her domineering Uncle Kouzuki. But the maid has a secret. She is a pickpocket recruited by a swindler posing as a Japanese Count to help him seduce the Lady to steal her fortune.
A family dog - with a near-human soul and a philosopher's mind - evaluates his life through the lessons learned by his human owner, a race-car driver.
A bullied teenage girl forms an unlikely friendship with a mysterious young man who protects her from her assailants, while she copes with the pressures of her final examinations.
On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.
These are films that earn their laughs - not through cheap gags, but through character, timing, and an understanding of what actually makes people laugh.
Great romance cinema earns its place in memory by being honest about love â not flattering it, not sentimentalising it, but showing it clearly enough that it resonates.