Film

Chasing the Present

A materially successful but anxious young man travels the world seeking spiritual and philosophical answers, interviewing luminaries from psychedelics, neuroscience, and mysticism. Meditative documentary that asks whether mindfulness and consciousness exploration can quiet modern dread. For seekers, doubters, and anyone caught between ambition and emptiness.

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy seeing big questions about consciousness and meditation pursued through conversations with teachers and thinkers, and you don't mind a film that's more open-ended searching than argument.

Skip it if you're skeptical of spiritual self-help or want a tighter story, since its earnest, talk-heavy seeking can feel repetitive and meandering.

What it asks of you: Ninety-five minutes at a contemplative pace, more travel and conversation than plot, so you'll need patience for ideas to build rather than quick payoffs.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Waking Life2001

Rotoscoped animation follows a man in a dream-like state questioning reality, consciousness, and meaning through conversations with philosophers. Visually stunning meditation on existence itself. Pure intellectual wandering.

But Deliberately plotless. Some scenes feel undergraduate-philosophy earnest. Animation style isn't for everyone.

Waking Life poster

The Minimalists: Less Is Now2021

Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus deconstruct why accumulation fails to satisfy. Sleek documentary about releasing material obsession. Speaks directly to the successful-but-empty predicament.

But Can feel preachy about consumption. Solutions offered are more obvious than the problem diagnosis.

The Minimalists: Less Is Now poster

A Prayer Before Dawn2018

True story of an American addict imprisoned in Thailand who finds discipline and redemption through Muay Thai. Visceral proof that internal transformation requires real physical and mental reckoning.

But Violence and prison conditions are unflinching. Not uplifting—it's gritty and sometimes bleak.

A Prayer Before Dawn poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Chasing the Present

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Castaway on the Moon2009

Both follow a journey inward that questions whether material or social success matters. Both suggest that presence and small rituals hold as much truth as big spiritual discoveries.

A suicidal Korean man, dropped accidentally on an island, reconstructs meaning through routine, art, and connection to someone unseen. Magical realism meets existential despair. Finds warmth in loneliness without denying darkness.

But Non-Western sensibility and pacing may feel oblique. Mixes tones in ways that can feel tonally uneven.

Castaway on the Moon poster
More like this (5)

The Work2017

Documentary following a therapeutic group process in a maximum-security prison. Men confront their violence and wounds. Profound, difficult, real. No therapy-speak or shortcuts—only hard honesty.

But Emotionally intense and sometimes hard to watch. Slow-paced. Not a feel-good journey, but a genuine struggle.

The Work poster

Inherit the Wind1960

Tracy and Heston debate science versus faith in a town gripped by fundamentalism. Asks whether conviction or doubt serves us better. Articulate, theatrical, still morally urgent.

But Filmed theater, not cinema. The satire can feel heavy-handed. Dated in pacing.

Inherit the Wind poster

Wild2014

Reese Witherspoon's Cheryl Strayed hikes the Pacific Crest Trail seeking healing after trauma and dissolution. Slow, meditative, about solitude's power to reorganize a shattered self.

But Quiet to the point of loneliness. Some find the self-discovery arc too neat by the end.

Wild poster

The Biggest Little Farm2019

A couple abandons Los Angeles to build a regenerative farm in Ventura County. Document of learning to work with nature rather than against it. Visual poetry about patience and interconnection.

But Slow pastoral pacing tests attention. May feel escapist rather than exploratory to some viewers.

The Biggest Little Farm poster

The Holy Mountain1973

Both depict spiritual seeking as a journey to meet teachers and confront mortality. Holy Mountain simply doesn't pretend its visions are literal truth. It stages the search as the illusion it always is—which may be more honest.

Jodorowsky's surrealist odyssey of a spiritual seeker climbing toward enlightenment. Bizarre, symbolic, visually unlike anything else. Not a documentary but a fever dream of awakening—more honest about its own artifice than many spiritual searches.

But Extremely strange and graphic. Symbolism can feel impenetrable. Not meditative—it assaults the senses.

The Holy Mountain poster

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