World cinema, in conversation with experts across disciplines.
Tackling themes of colonialism, NAFTA, Catholic religious imagery, time, and tension between small-scale artisanship and industrial capitalism, we dive deep with Dr. Lydia CdeBaca into Guillermo Del Toro’s debut film Cronos (1992), a Mexican dark fantasy horror reimagining of the vampire.
Works Discussed:
Cronos (Guillermo Del Toro, 1992)
Get comfortable! Because in this week’s episode, we’re talking about romance and the 8,000 layers of In-yun that bring lovers together… and what happens when, in the face of destiny, you wonder: Is this person written into my destiny to stay? Or are they fated to leave? Are we meant for each other, or are we destined to walk away?
We talk with Dr. Jennifer Smith about the patterns of Romance and the openings they create to ask questions about ourselves, our relationships, and our culture.
Works Discussed:
Past Lives (Celine Song, 2023)
An asteroid has struck Earth, unleashing a catastrophic flood that sweeps away everything in its path. As the waters rise, you race toward higher ground. But, along the way, you encounter people looting abandoned apartments, a woman in labor, a child trapped in an elevator. And then you realize, your own child is missing. What do you do?
Kim Byung-woo’s The Great Flood asks, how do we respond to overwhelming challenges? What are the forces that move us?
In this episode, we explore these questions with engineers Greg Rulifson and Ana Maria Macias Parra, asking what engineering can teach us about responding to disasters. Their work grounds them in action, not helplessness. What do we do with the relatively short time before the flood arrives? We make a difference in other people’s lives.
Works Discussed:
The Great Flood (Byung-woo Kim, 2025)
Programs Discussed:
Humanitarian Engineering – Cockrell School of Engineering – University of Texas at Austin.
In Mati Diop’s documentary Dahomey, we hear the voice of the past—literally. Diop gives a voice to one of the 26 royal treasures returned to Benin as we follow its journey home. In just under 70 minutes, Dahomey turns a story about the return of stolen objects into a debate on what happens when pieces of a country’s history, memories, and identity have been taken away. This week, we’re talking with historian Dr. Jimena Perry about museums… a lot. Because sure, museums can sometimes feel boring, but they can also be messy, political, and transformative spaces where we negotiate memory, identity, and the stories we carry forward. By the end of this conversation, you might see museums a little differently. And we have a list of places below to get you started!
Works Discussed:
Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024)
The Birth of the Museum (Tony Benett, 1994)
Museums Discussed:
Musée d’ethnographie de Genève (“Geneva Ethnography Museum”) Dialogue Objects– Geneva, Switzerland
National Center for Human and Civil Rights Atlanta, USA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)- The Temple of Dendur NYC, USA
Museum of the City of New York NYC, USA
Museo Casa de la Memoria (Memory House Museum) Medellin, Colombia
International Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Geneva, Switzerland
El museo del barrio NYC USA
Tenement Museum NYC USA
Hispanic Society Museum and Library NYC USA
Museo Nacional de Colombia (National Museum of Colombia) Bogota, Colombia
Martin Luther King Jr’s Birth Home Atlanta, USA
Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage Grasmere, England
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Washington DC, USA
Episode 8. Stories We Tell with Leanna Petronella
Welcome back to Season 2! And we’re starting with a banger. Truths are revealed, and crafted, in Sarah Polley’s documentary Stories We Tell, as her search to learn more about her recently deceased mother turns into a search to uncover the identity of her biological father. With poet Leanna Petronella, we talk about family secrets, the craft of writing, and ask the question: “To whom does a story belong?”
Join us as we explore family drama, memory, storytelling, and the complicated question of what is the truth behind the stories we tell.
Works Discussed:
Stories we tell (Sarah Polley, 2012)
The Imaginary Age (Leanna Petronella, 2016)
This film has everything! Beautiful costuming, gorgeous locations, amazing camera work, but also some very adult scenes … and a live octopus. So viewer and listener discretion is advised. This week, Associate Professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology, Dr. Jacqueline Avila joins us to explore the music and soundscape of the erotic thriller The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016). As the film progresses, new layers of secrecy, deeper levels of the house, and new textures in the score, are revealed.
Works Discussed:
The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016)
“My Tamako, My Sookee” by Jo Yeong-wook
The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife by Hokusai
This week I’ll trade you film talk for some book talk. Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondo, 1996) puts us in a cozy mood to reminisce and share origin stories. Antiquarian bookseller, and owner of Livra Books, Moctezuma Seth Gonzalez, talks about his quest to learn more about the people and objects around him, and the stories they carry. It is a story of mysterious jars of black peaches, competing with Turkish booksellers, and reading Descartes at 14.
Works Discussed: Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondo, 1996)
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)
Can we escape our fate? Why do we go back to a story we know well? In this episode of Watch Next, we revisit the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as depicted in Céline Sciama’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Professor of Classics Deborah Beck talks to us about our human failings: doubt, temptation, and how the ancient Greeks told stories to understand ourselves and the world around us. It’s an old song, an old tale, that we sing again and again.
Works Discussed:
Portrait of a lady on fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019)Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
From the streets of Mumbai to the royal courts of Hindustan, poetry has always found its voice. What do the rap battles of Gully Boy have in common with the royal qawwali mehfil in Mughal-e-Azam? In this episode of Watch Next, we explore the rhythm and rebellion of Gully Boy with the cohosts of the limited-edition podcast PoeTry, Yuki and Koya.
Works Discussed:
Gully Boy (Zoya Akhtar, 2019)
“Azadi” by Divine and Dub Sharma Mughal-e-Azam (K. Asif, 1960)