MORGIANA

If you're craving a film that epitomizes 1970s-era stylistic excess - swooping cameras, Freudian set decoration, swooning women in heavily embellished dresses - you've arrived at the right place.

In this florid masterpiece of psychotic cinema, Iva Janžurová plays the dual roles of sisters Klára and Viktorie, as the brooding Viktorie yearns to undermine her favored sibling through slow poisoning. In both roles, she wears enough makeup to provision a small army of drag queens. Beautifully rendered from Russian author Alexander Grin’s 1929 novel, MORGIANA is a kaleidoscopic rabbit hole of insidious gothic tropes and stunning Art Nouveau-inspired production design. Encompassing murder, romance, blackmail, duplicitous wills, and crossed identities, it’s a film best appreciated by casting literal interpretations aside and viewing as a surrealistic portrait of a fracturing mind told through roving, wide-angle camerawork, obtuse reflections, nightmare interludes, and a brain-burrowing score by Luboš Fišer.

Part fairy tale, part Gothic horror, MORGIANA is a full-blown hallucinatory experience from the director of the chilling THE CREMATOR. Oh and by the way, the titular character is an adorable Siamese cat