Episode 5 – LSD 2 with Eleni Palis

When authenticity is marketed like a brand and “reality” is performed for the camera, LSD 2 asks: what happens when we can’t trust what we see? Replicating the visual language of news broadcasts, reality TV, and social media feeds, Dibakar Banerjee’s LSD 2 drops us into a reality shaped by deepfakes, AI-generated images, and constant surveillance. 

In this episode of Watch Next, we’re joined by Dr. Eleni Palis, Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to unpack these questions and discuss why they feel more urgent than ever. Together, we trace how today’s media landscape echoes ideas filmmakers have been grappling with for decades, from Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. And like them, we look at the past to understand our future. 

Works Discussed:

LSD 2  (Dibakar Banerjee, 2024)

Citizen Kane (Orson Wells, 1941)

Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1951)