You have been going backward. Not to live there, just to touch the texture of a time that felt different, to confirm that easier versions of things existed once and might exist again. The nostalgia is something you are constructing deliberately from what's available, and you are aware of the construction and doing it anyway, because sometimes the manufactured version is the closest thing. These films work in the same register. They hold an earlier feeling with enough honesty that you can borrow it for a while.
Raj is a rich, carefree, happy-go-lucky second generation NRI. Simran is the daughter of Chaudhary Baldev Singh, who in spite of being an NRI is very strict about adherence to Indian values. Simran has left for India to be married to her childhood fiancé. Raj leaves for India wit
It holds a register of warmth that belongs to an earlier time. Close enough to the feeling you're reaching for that you can borrow it for a while.
Safe to go backward
Retired and widowed Chinese master chef Chu lives in modern day Taipei, with his three attractive daughters, all of whom are unattached. Soon, each daughter encounters a new man in their lives. When these new relationships blossom, stereotypes are broken and the living situation
The texture of this film is familiar in the way old photographs are familiar. It gives you somewhere to put the tenderness that has nowhere else to go.
Holds the past carefully
A former Prohibition-era Jewish gangster returns to the Lower East Side of Manhattan over thirty years later, where he once again must confront the ghosts and regrets of his old life.
It goes backward in the right way. Not nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, but honest about what it felt like when the thing you're missing was still there.
Warmth without demand
A man with a low IQ has accomplished great things in his life and been present during significant historic events:in each case, far exceeding what anyone imagined he could do. But despite all he has achieved, his one true love eludes him.
The warmth of this film is specific and it is real and it doesn't require you to explain why you needed it.
Real enough to borrow
The films that follow lean into the texture of memory. They know what you are looking for in the past.
Set in the Bronx during the tumultuous 1960s, an adolescent boy is torn between his honest, working-class father and a violent yet charismatic crime boss. Complicating matters is the youngster's growing attraction - forbidden in his neighborhood - for a beautiful black girl.
It holds a register of warmth that belongs to an earlier time. Close enough to the feeling you're reaching for that you can borrow it for a while.
Safe to go backward
The invasion of a village in Belarus by German forces sends young Florya into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes. There he meets a girl, Glasha, who accompanies him back to his village. On returning home, Florya finds his family and fell
The texture of this film is familiar in the way old photographs are familiar. It gives you somewhere to put the tenderness that has nowhere else to go.
Holds the past carefully
At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
It goes backward in the right way. Not nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, but honest about what it felt like when the thing you're missing was still there.
Warmth without demand
As children in the loving Ekdahl family, Fanny and Alexander enjoy a happy life with their parents, who run a theater company. After their father dies unexpectedly, however, the siblings end up in a joyless home when their mother, Emilie, marries a stern bishop. The bleak situati
The warmth of this film is specific and it is real and it doesn't require you to explain why you needed it.
Real enough to borrow
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
It holds a register of warmth that belongs to an earlier time. Close enough to the feeling you're reaching for that you can borrow it for a while.
Safe to go backward
Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.
The texture of this film is familiar in the way old photographs are familiar. It gives you somewhere to put the tenderness that has nowhere else to go.
Holds the past carefully
Based on the true life experiences of poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, the film focuses on half-brothers Paco and Cruz, and their bi-racial cousin Miklo. It opens in 1972, as the three are members of an East L.A. gang known as the "Vatos Locos", and the story focuses on how a violent cr
It goes backward in the right way. Not nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, but honest about what it felt like when the thing you're missing was still there.
Warmth without demand
In the final months of World War II, 14-year-old Seita and his sister Setsuko are orphaned when their mother is killed during an air raid in Kobe, Japan. After a falling out with their aunt, they move into an abandoned bomb shelter. With no surviving relatives and their emergency
The warmth of this film is specific and it is real and it doesn't require you to explain why you needed it.
Real enough to borrow
You can't go back. You can get close. These are close.