Hard Truths - an Animus film podcast

When Curry Barker’s Obsession (2025) came out in cinemas a few months ago, a small debate emerged online about audience reactions and the director’s intentions. Was this a film about dating a “crazy” girlfriend, or about misogynistic fantasies of domination and control? Although most online discourse could do with more nuance, in this case it is important to be categorical: Obsession is unambiguously a film about a r*pist. 
A few weeks after the film came out, Elena happened to organise a screening of Nicolas Roeg’s masterpiece Bad Timing (1980), and she noticed a parallel with Obsession: here too, the male protagonist thinks he is the good guy, even as he psychologically and physically tortures the woman he is with. But even more striking was a Letterboxd review from a user who seemed to misunderstand Roeg’s film in the same way that some people missed the point of Obsession: Bad Timing, to this viewer, was highly relatable as a film about the horrendous experience of… dating a “crazy” girl. 
In this episode, Elena and Manuela discuss the ways in which Barker’s and Roeg’s films approach a painful topic, wrongfoot their audience, and progressively give viewers the information they need to understand what is really going on. 
Hard Truths is an ⁠⁠Animus⁠⁠ film podcast. As often as they can, Animus founder and editor Elena Lazic catches up from London, UK, with her twin Manuela, who can usually be found across the pond in Paris. Expect animated conversations about cinema, digressions into unrelated topics, and trivial facts from our personal lives. Do NOT expect to immediately be able to tell us apart.

Elena and Manuela try on a looser podcasting style in Bologna, at Il Cinema Ritrovato. Among the topics they cover are: Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, libraries, file sharing, budding cinephiles, Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid, F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, and much more.
Hard Truths is an ⁠⁠Animus⁠⁠ film podcast. Every other week, Animus founder and editor Elena Lazic catches up from London, UK, with her twin Manuela, who can usually be found across the pond in Paris. Expect animated conversations about cinema, digressions into unrelated topics, and trivial facts from our personal lives. Do NOT expect to immediately be able to tell us apart.

As Elena’s season Finding Your Way: The Films of Peter Weir was winding down at the BFI Southbank in London, she joined Manuela to talk some more about the cinema of this fascinating Australian filmmaker, from Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, to Fearless, Witness to Gallipoli, Dead Poets Society to The Truman Show and more. 
Hard Truths is an ⁠⁠Animus⁠⁠ film podcast. Every other week, Animus founder and editor Elena Lazic catches up from London, UK, with her twin Manuela, who can usually be found across the pond in Paris. Expect animated conversations about cinema, digressions into unrelated topics, and trivial facts from our personal lives. Do NOT expect to immediately be able to tell us apart. 
Hard Truths is made possible by ⁠⁠True Cinephile⁠⁠ paying members who support all things Animus by paying £3.50/month or £35/year.

French filmmaker Maurice Pialat initially wanted to be a painter. He did not fulfil that dream, and it’s hard not to trace at least part of his legendary anger and bitterness back to this early frustration. Centred on protagonists who can be brutal with one another as they cope with violent waves of emotion, his films are nevertheless marked by undeniable beauty and heartbreaking gentleness. They have the same gripping immediacy and moving grace as works by some of his most cherished artists, chief among them Vincent Van Gogh – and Pialat’s biopic of the Dutch painter may well be his masterpiece. In this long gestating episode, Elena and Manuela get emotional talking about the work of one of their favourite film directors. 
Hard Truths is an ⁠⁠Animus⁠⁠ film podcast. Every other week, Animus founder and editor Elena Lazic catches up from London, UK, with her twin Manuela, who can usually be found across the pond in Paris. Expect animated conversations about cinema, digressions into unrelated topics, and trivial facts from our personal lives. Do NOT expect to immediately be able to tell us apart. 
Hard Truths is made possible by ⁠⁠True Cinephile⁠⁠ paying members who, for £3.50/month or £35/year, access all instalments of the advice column for cinephiles Psycho. two days early, and more.

Is love real, or a socially accepted form of delusion? Is there such a thing as chemistry, or are random encounters only perceived as meaningful connections through the lens of expectation and memory? Is romance a choice, or written in the unalterable script of our destiny? As Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) turns 30, Elena and Manuela revisit the Before Trilogy, completed by Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). This ill-fated episode, re-recorded and delayed, ends with a brief reflection on Nouvelle Vague (2025), Linklater’s film of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle (1960). 
Hard Truths is an ⁠⁠Animus⁠⁠ film podcast. Every other week, Animus founder and editor Elena Lazic catches up from London, UK, with her twin Manuela, who can usually be found across the pond in Paris. Expect animated conversations about cinema, digressions into unrelated topics, and trivial facts from our personal lives. Do NOT expect to immediately be able to tell us apart. 
Hard Truths is made possible by ⁠⁠True Cinephile⁠⁠ paying members who, for £3.50/month or £35/year, access all instalments of the advice column for cinephiles Psycho. two days early, and more.