Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
Adem lives alone on Ada Međica, a small island on the River Sava in Belgrade, Serbia. Surrounded by greenery and calm water, there’s a gentle beauty to the rhythms of his everyday life. But, between walking his dog, picking roses and riding his small boat, he also finds himself revisiting the past – as one often does after the loss of a beloved family member to suicide. In Adem’s Island, the Serbian filmmaker Ivana Todorović tracks moments in the life of a man carrying on after the death of his daughter. Along with the Croatian cinematographer Maša Drndić, Todorović uses long takes and natural lighting to capture the passing of time as Adem goes about his daily tasks, and shares drinks and music with friends, while quietly mourning. Throughout, Adem’s sparse narration captures how grief unpredictably and inevitably creeps in, and how there are some wounds time can never quite heal.
Director: Ivana Todorović
video
Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
video
War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes
video
Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
6 minutes
video
Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
10 minutes
video
Technology and the self
Why single Chinese women are freezing their eggs in California
24 minutes
video
Childhood and adolescence
The police camp where tween girls enter a sisterhood of law and order
28 minutes
video
Astronomy
The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky
5 minutes
video
Technology and the self
A haunting scene from ‘Minority Report’ inspires a voyage into time and memory
7 minutes
video
Family life
The stream-of-consciousness thoughts and memories that emerge while cooking a meal
5 minutes