Film
Arachnid
Other titles called Arachnid: the 2001 film.
A four-minute film about Ama, an Ashanti goddess, meeting her estranged ex Anansi—the trickster god of stories—as he tries to win her back. It's intimate and mythological at once, drawing on West African traditions to explore desire, betrayal, and whether love can survive what's broken it. Gorgeously composed and emotionally precise.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you like myth reshaped into a tight, talky scene between two exes, where a few minutes of prickly history between two gods carries more weight than an epic would.
Skip it if you want a story that unfolds at length; four minutes gives it little room to build, and it moves more like a sketch than a full arc.
What it asks of you: Just a few minutes of mostly one conversation, with the attention you'd give a short stage play; it rewards close listening and offers almost no downtime.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
High Life2018
Claire Denis creates a visionary sci-fi film about isolation, desire and humanity stripped bare. Robert Pattinson gives a career-best performance in near-total silence, letting the camera do the heavy lifting.
But It moves with glacial intention and contains graphic sexual violence. Not a film that coddles or explains itself.
Moonlight2016
Three chapters of a Black man's life, told with such tenderness and visual poetry that every moment feels sacred. It's about desire, identity, and the people we become for those we love.
But Very quiet. Deliberately paced. If you need plot momentum or clear resolutions, this will frustrate you.
The Tale of The Princess Kaguya2013
Isao Takahata's masterpiece—a Japanese folktale about a mysterious girl and the men who want to own her. Animated like watercolor, it moves between whimsy and heartbreak with devastating grace.
But The animation style is unlike anything else and takes adjustment. Some find the pacing meditative to the point of slowness.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Arachnid
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Praise1999
Both use mythic or archetypal language about desire—the god-mortal dynamic—to explore how love can unmake us, and what we owe to people we've wronged.
Filmmaker John Duigan adapts Andrew McGahan's novel about a woman destroyed by her lover's indifference. Like Arachnid, it takes myth-level emotions—desire as destiny—and grounds them in intimate, unbearable scenes between two people.
But It's bleak and sexually explicit. The protagonist's degradation is the point, which makes it hard to sit with. Not redemptive.
More like this (8)
A Ghost Story2017
David Lowery's meditation on time, loss, and what haunts us. It sounds simple—a man returns as a ghost—but it expands into something genuinely profound about love and letting go.
But A man spends a significant portion of the film under a white sheet. The whole thing is deliberately strange and ungainly.
Chungking Express1994
Wong Kar-wai's neon-soaked romance about two cops, two women, and all the love that happens in the spaces between. It's pop and poetic, funny and aching, all at once.
But The editing is frenetic and the story deliberately fragmented. Subtitles move fast and the plot is secondary to mood.
The Fountain2006
Darren Aronofsky's obsessive three-timeline love story. Visually stunning and emotionally devastating, it dares to ask what love means across death itself.
But It's cryptic, structurally ambitious, and genuinely difficult. Many people find it pretentious or inaccessible on first viewing.
First Reformed2018
Paul Schrader's spare, agonizing portrait of a pastor in crisis. Ethan Hawke delivers a performance of raw vulnerability; the film asks hard questions about faith and redemption.
But It's austere and slow-burning. The ending divides audiences sharply. Not a film that offers comfort.
Climax2018
Gaspar Noé follows a dance troupe whose night descends into horror. Visually dazzling and structurally playful, it's a film about bodies, control, and the fragility of joy.
But Extremely graphic content including sexual violence. The second half is deliberately difficult to watch and designed to overwhelm.
Strange Days1995
Kathryn Bigelow's underrated 90s noir about memory, desire, and surveillance in a decaying Los Angeles. It's stylish, smart, and genuinely propulsive.
But A product of its era in some ways that haven't aged perfectly. The plot relies on contrivance in the final act.
Black Is King2020
Both centre West African cosmology and storytelling traditions. Both use extremely compressed time—minutes or songs—to convey entire emotional and mythological arcs. Both are beautiful precisely because they assume you know the stories already.
Beyoncé's visual album reimagines The Lion King through Black diaspora and West African visual traditions. It's pure image, music, and movement—storytelling without dialogue, myth through dance and color.
But No conventional narrative or plot. Some experience it as pretentious. It prioritizes aesthetic vision over accessibility.
The Babadook2014
Both use mythological or folkloric frameworks to explore intimate emotional rupture. Both suggest that what haunts us isn't supernatural—it's the weight of love and damage between two people who know each other too well.
Jennifer Kent's horror film is actually about a mother and son processing grief and rage through a creature that emerges from a children's book. It's visually inventive, deeply unsettling, and emotionally devastating.
But It's a horror film with genuine scares. The ambiguity frustrates some viewers. The mother's rage—which is the film's truth—is uncomfortable to witness.
People
Cast
- Isaac Kofi ArthurAnansi
Directing
- Carl Earl-OcranDirector
Production
- Van MosesCo-Producer
- Kwaku Obeng BoatengProducer
- Saviour GatogoProducer