To celebrate our tenth anniversary, we asked Film Streams staff and board members to pick their top ten from the more than 1,600 films that illuminated the screens of the Ruth Sokolof Theater during its first decade. What emerged was a series that champions some of the finest independent and foreign films released in the last ten years.
Horror films are rarely about the monsters we see onscreen. They are about social horrors: ghosts recall traumas of the past, monsters are Others that exploit our deepest fears, and vampires are spectres of isolation and alienation. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is a scary but beautiful film built on the pathos of its protagonist, who is both a danger and a vulnerable soul.
Director Tomas Alfredson spoke to Anthem Magazine about how he got the child actors to convey the film’s dark themes honestly and resonantly, “I didn’t let them read the screenplay. I read it aloud to them so they would hear me say the lines in a certain way. Child actors don’t go into character. They go into specific situations. You cannot say to a child, ‘You are very angry at your father.’ You can say, ‘You are very angry at your father in this specific situation.’ You can say to a grownup, ‘You are a very sad person’ or ‘You are a very intelligent person.’ To a child, you have to put them into very present situations like ‘You are hungry now’ or ‘You are tired.’ Then I have to make conclusions and put the things together, which is like a puzzle.”
