The Zen Diary

The Golden Era

The story of writer Xiao Hong comes alive through memories of her great love affair, literary influence and escape from China during World War II.

2022

La mort petita

Adela is a single mother, hardworking and humble. While she works, her mother takes care of her son. Immersed in her obligations that don't allow her to think about her, she will be forced to open her eyes and face a new reality when, on an early morning, her mother runs away from home and begins to show the first signs of dementia.

9.0

2021

The Station In-Between

Theo and Louis, two gay gentlemen, embark on a train journey to Paxmal. They are carrying an urn - it is the last journey for a friend. On their way deep into the Swiss Alps the two men, struggling with their fate, meet various people. While some of these people remind Theo and Louis again of the beautiful things in life, others confront them with ghosts from the past.

6.4

Out of Nature

Out of Nature is a journey inside Martins head. A family father in his 30s living in a small town of Norway. He feels alienated in his own life and longs to get away. Away from his job, away from his family, into the woods, up to the mountains. While spending a weekend alone on a hiking trip, he is forced to confront the way he lives his life. Out of Nature is an original, funny and tender film about how to take part in your own life as a husband, father and son.

5.8

1963

The Desolate Beach

A writer meets five widows on a train to Puri. As the six lives begin to intertwine, the theme of the taboos of widowhood emerge; but so, too, does a philosophy of life and hope for the future. The performers collectively won Best Actress at India's National Film Awards in 1964.

5.9

1998

Permanent Midnight

Juggling increasing career success and a growing heroin habit, a television comedy writer attempts to go down a path of improvement.

5.5

2019

Mister T.

Warsaw, Poland, 1953. Mr. T., a renowned writer, lives in a hotel and earns his living by giving private lessons.

5.8

1957

The Sun Also Rises

A group of disillusioned American expatriate writers live a dissolute, hedonistic lifestyle in 1920's France and Spain.

5.7

1991

K2

They call it the savage mountain. 27 people have perished trying to reach the summit on K2, the world's second highest peak. A U.S. climbing team, funded by millionaire Clairborne is determined to conquer K2.

4.9

2009

Deadline

A screenwriter travels to an abandoned house to finish a script on time, but a series of strange events lead her to a psychological breakdown.

1998

Eternity and a Day

Famous writer Alexander contracts a terminal illness. He receives a letter from his wife describing a summer day 30 years ago, and leaves his seaside home to remember his past. This journey will allow him to wander between the past and the present, and encounter unexpected people, allowing him to collect unforgettable memories in the final moments of his life.

6.6

2007

My Boy Jack

Author Rudyard Kipling and his wife search for their 17-year-old son after he goes missing during WWI.

7.0

1991

Naked Lunch

Blank-faced bug killer Bill Lee and his dead-eyed wife, Joan, like to get high on Bill's pest poisons while lounging with Beat poet pals. After meeting the devilish Dr. Benway, Bill gets a drug made from a centipede. Upon indulging, he accidentally kills Joan, takes orders from his typewriter-turned-cockroach, ends up in a constantly mutating Mediterranean city and learns that his hip friends have published his work -- which he doesn't remember writing.

6.5

1978

Le Pion

Humiliated and down on his luck, a superintendent turns his life around when he decides to write a book.

7.3

2002

Adaptation.

Charlie Kaufman is a confused L.A. screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual frustration, self-loathing, and by the screenwriting ambitions of his freeloading twin brother Donald. While struggling to adapt "The Orchid Thief," by Susan Orlean, Kaufman's life spins from pathetic to bizarre. The lives of Kaufman and Orlean's book become strangely intertwined as each one's search for passion collides with the other's.

2004

Closer

The relationships of two couples become complicated and deceitful when the man from one couple meets the woman of the other.

6.4

1991

Kafka

After a colleague is murdered, insurance worker Kafka gets embroiled in an underground group who are attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society.

6.2

1988

Hunting Time

During the year of the repressive military regime, a Turkish writer gets disillusioned by the loss of a dear friend and retires to his hometown on a remote island where he feels safe from the political turmoil. There he escapes to the world of memories, having imaginary conversations with his dead friend. However, the news of a new murder alerts him to the dangers lying ahead. Shot in Turkey following the years of military regime, Av Zamani carries autobiographical elements as the director Erden Kiral also had to flee the repressive regime of his country to be an exile in Germany. The weakness of the film is that the director is not able to take enough distance from the events to give the story a more universal appeal. Av Zamani was screened at the Montreal World Film Festival 1988.

2023

This Is Your Song

On the night of their wedding anniversary, a bohemian theatre actress and a beatnik inspired writer confront the strife of their relationship, dreams, and the city they once loved.

6.7

2001

Riding in Cars with Boys

In 1965, a young woman with dreams of becoming a writer has a son at the age of 15 and struggles to make things work with the drug-addicted father.

Recommended Movies

1983

The Ballad of Narayama

In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.

6.2

2016

The Sea of Trees

In Japan's Aokigahara Forest, a troubled teacher meets a mysterious lost stranger who takes him on a life-changing journey of love and redemption.

6.5

2024

Here

An odyssey through time and memory, centered on a place in New Jersey where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and legacy play out between couples and families over generations.

2023

Evil Does Not Exist

Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a camping site near Takumi's house offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to nature.

2015

Little Forest: Winter/Spring

Ichiko bakes a cake for an end-of-year party with her friends. In the depths of winter, making mochi and curry keeps the people of Komori warm. Later, spring brings thoughts of her absent mother as well as rice planting and sakura, and she begins to think of leaving Komori behind again.

Little Forest: Summer/Autumn

Fleeing heartbreak in the big city, Ichiko returns to Komori, her rural hometown. She battles summer's rain and humidity, bakes her own bread, grows hothouse tomatoes and tills the fields. During autumn, the time for pickling and preserving fish and sweet potatoes, Ichiko begins reaping rice and recalls her departure five years before.

1947

Black Narcissus

A group of Anglican nuns, led by Sister Clodagh, are sent to a mountain in the Himalayas. The climate in the region is hostile and the nuns are housed in an odd old palace. They work to establish a school and a hospital, but slowly their focus shifts. Sister Ruth falls for a government worker, Mr. Dean, and begins to question her vow of celibacy. As Sister Ruth obsesses over Mr. Dean, Sister Clodagh becomes immersed in her own memories of love.

7.7

1990

Dreams

Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.

7.2

1997

Seven Years in Tibet

Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer journeys to the Himalayas without his family to head an expedition in 1939. But when World War II breaks out, the arrogant Harrer falls into Allied forces' hands as a prisoner of war. He escapes with a fellow detainee and makes his way to Lhasa, Tibet, where he meets the 14-year-old Dalai Lama, whose friendship ultimately transforms his outlook on life.

2018

Leave No Trace

A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. But when a small mistake tips them off to authorities, they are sent on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.

6.5

2015

Hungry Hearts

The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.

1953

Ugetsu

In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers in a nearby village, in defiance of a local sage's warning against seeking to profit from warfare. Genjuro's pursuit of both riches and the mysterious Lady Wakasa, as well as Tobei's desire to become a samurai, run the risk of destroying both themselves and their wives, Miyagi and Ohama.

1995

Maborosi

A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.

2023

Perfect Days

Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.

The Miracles of the Namiya General Store

6.9

2017

The Miracles of the Namiya General Store

In 2012, Atsuya and his 2 childhood friends do something bad and run into an old general store. They decide to stay there until the morning. Late into the night, Atsuya sees a letter in the mailbox. The letter is addressed to the Namiya General Store and the letter was written by someone to consult about worries. Incredibly, the letter was written 32 years ago. The mailbox is somehow connected to the year 1980. Atsuya and his friends decide to write a reply and place their letter in the mailbox.

1950

Rashomon

Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.

Heaven Is for Real

After their young son, Colton, undergoes emergency surgery, small-town parents Todd and Sonja Burpo are overjoyed at the child's miraculous recovery. However, the Burpos are unprepared for what happens next... Colton says that during his surgery he went to heaven and back, and tells his parents things that he couldn't possibly know. Can Todd find the courage and conviction to share his son's extraordinary, life-changing experience with the world?

2011

From Up on Poppy Hill

Yokohama, 1963. Japan is picking itself up from the devastation of World War II and preparing to host the 1964 Olympics—and the mood is one of both optimism and conflict as the young generation struggles to throw off the shackles of a troubled past. Against this backdrop of hope and change, a friendship begins to blossom between high school students Umi and Shun—but a buried secret from their past emerges to cast a shadow on the future and pull them apart.

7.3

2015

Orange

A girl mysteriously receives advice from her future self and as a result her group of friends, along with a newly arrived, troubled classmate, learn how to be better friends and a better community.

1958

The Hidden Fortress

In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.