This sensational and engrossing film won the Palme d’Or, top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and ran away with the top European Film Awards for best film, best director, best actress, best screenwriter for 2023.

The movie propels its audience through a mystery that begins with Samuel dropping to his death from the upper window of a French chalet he shares with his wife Sandra and their eleven-year old son Daniel. The immediate and obvious question is whether Samuel jumped or was pushed, but the courtroom drama that follows leads us into other mysteries. One involves Samuel and Sandra’s conflicted relationship; another is about why she writes and why he wishes to but doesn’t; then there is a running subtext about language itself; and finally, there’s young Daniel. This movie challenges its viewers in how they understand and believe things. As noted by The New Yorker, “we can’t help wondering: when, and under what emotional pressure, does a memory shift from being a reliable account of something to a story that we tell ourselves about what we wish had occurred?”

Anatomy of a Fall is R rated and there are some subtitles. The movie will be free, with donations welcome to help offset production costs.