Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
In a nearly wordless sequence, the short documentary The Same captures men and women in four of Serbia’s largest prisons in daily routines of eating, working, socialising, grooming and moving mechanically through their environment. While some of these activities, such as baking bread or tending to horses, seem more desirable than others, the constricted nature of the scenes lends the montage a disquieting character. The Serbian director Dejan Petrović augments these images with a soundscape crafted from the rhythms of prison life – the key-clanking and beeps of guards moving through a metal detector, meals moving on and off of trays in a mess hall, sewing machines whirring on a prison factory floor. Despite the film’s alienating effect, there’s also a perhaps dissonant beauty to the images, which are artfully framed and often imbued with metaphor. The result is a complex meditation on identity and individuality, conformity and freedom.
video
Social psychology
What happened when a crypto scam swept over a sleepy town in the Caucasus
18 minutes
video
Gender
A catchy tune explains the world’s ‘isms’ – according to your mum doing the laundry
5 minutes
video
Architecture
A 3D rendering of the Colosseum captures its architectural genius and symbolic power
17 minutes
video
Human rights and justice
Surreal, dazzling visuals form an Iranian expat’s tribute to defiance back home
10 minutes
video
Language and linguistics
Do button-pushing dogs have something new to say about language?
9 minutes
video
Art
When East met West in the images of an overlooked, original photographer
9 minutes
video
Values and beliefs
Why a single tree, uprooted in a typhoon, means so much to one man in Hanoi
7 minutes
video
Consciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
video
Making
On the Norwegian coast, a tree is transformed into a boat the old-fashioned way
6 minutes